The Fear of God and Earwigs
by capostrophe
Summary: 'His Auntie Nellie was right when she said everything he had belonged to someone else.' A look back on the mistakes Shifty Boswell made, and the four people who most shaped his life. ATEOTD. Shifty/Martina, Shifty/Celia, unrequited Martina/Joey, implied unrequited Shifty/Joey.
1. Prologue: Love, Money and Animals

**I've been enormously busy juggling things, and unfortunately that means fanfiction was the first thing to be sacrificed once life got too hectic. I'm really close to finishing my Master's now, though, and once I don't have uni obligations anymore I plan to get back into fanfiction writing and finish all the half-written Bread fics I've got floating around.**

 **This one is another spinoff in the ATEOTD universe (surprise, surprise) and will focus on the influence different people had on Shifty's life, but it should bring a few ideas together that will eventually become quite big plot points in the ATEOTD series overall.**

 **I spent a lot of my time in the Bread fandom loathing Shifty (though he doesn't make me sick to my stomach the way Roxy does), but after getting into his head for a couple of fics, I actually found him to be quite a complex and interesting character and fun to write about. So yeah, enjoy me experimenting with the life of the Boswell black sheep, and of course, Joetina things will make an appearance.**

 **Bread belongs to the late, great Carla Lane. And a quote that comes up in this chapter belongs to _Mrs Boswell's Slice of Bread_ , slightly adapted.**

 _ **NB About Shifty in this universe:** There has been a bit of inconsistency in the show about Shifty's family. The overarching idea is that his mother was a 'friendly soul' and he didn't know who his father is. In one episode, however, his parents were married and hated each other too much to divorce each other. Shifty goes by the name Boswell, but is supposed to be related to Granddad. _Mrs Boswell's Slice of Bread _, which I normally take as canon, claims Shifty was their Aunt Aida's son, making him a direct cousin. However, in episodes of the show, he was far more distantly related to them than that, even admitting he 'wasn't exactly sure' how he was connected to the Boswells, so I'm disregarding the book for this fic. For the purposes of this universe, Shifty's mother is not Aida, and he is related to the Boswells by his mother's relationship with one of their relatives, and therefore not related to them by blood at all.  This will be important in later chapters. I know it's not exactly canon, but canon has not given us solid evidence to work with._

 **I'm also going to address the fact that Joey remembers Shifty when he arrives in series 4 but none of the other Boswell siblings do.**

* * *

 **Prologue  
Love, Money and** **Animals**  
 _It takes him four years to return to Liverpool._

 **2004**

Grandad dies not long after the Millennium begins. Shifty puts off going to the funeral, puts off visiting the gravesite to pay his respects, puts off returning to Liverpool at _all_ for as long as possible. In London, it's easier not to be noticed, to commit a little indiscretion every now and again without being immediately caught, to have a little affair now and again without bumping into the scorned lady a few months down the track. Shifty pays through the nose to rent a small flat, funds this taking odd jobs and supplementing his unstable stream of income with Jobseekers money and picks up girls when he feels like it, which is surprisingly easy when he gives Joey's history as his own and lets everyone think he's a wealthy entrepreneur (they needn't stay around long enough to find out otherwise.) Life is good—better, in fact, than it's ever been—and he stays away from home longer and longer, anxious not to allow painful memories of the past to seep in, of Joey, Martina, Celia, Grandad, Auntie Nellie. He can forget them all here, and it isn't until nearly four years later, when it pops into his head one morning that tomorrow would have been Grandad's birthday, that he makes the decision to go.

Well, that and the fact that he's got into a bit of trouble with the Met and would like to lie low, but he brushes that aside. Not every decision in his life is connected somehow to crime. He can, actually, when he wants to be, be a good man.

And so he packs a few essentials, looks up train timetables, works out where the CCTV cameras are and how he might sneak through the barrier without having to buy a ticket, decides to pick up something to read to kill the two and a half hours he could otherwise be panicking. He's really going. He's going back to a city to which he vowed never to return again, to a place where, even if he's less easily recognisable now, there will still be a distinct stain of loathing, an atmosphere of hatred, narrow-eyed glances thrown his way from those who remember him. Whatever reputation he once had (and let's face it, he thinks, it was never all that positive to begin with) has been reduced to a pile of ashes, muck and resentment. He doesn't want to think about it, even as he makes the preparations to face it all. So of course, as one does, he spends a good chunk of that morning pacing the streets and thinking about it.

He's wandering aimlessly around WHSmith, killing time before his train arrives and wondering what he might do if confronted by a Boswell or two when he gets to Liverpool, when he spots it.

It's pretty hard not to. The bloody thing has nearly a whole shelf devoted to it, not to mention the tacky-looking dump bin at the front of the shop, and the cardboard cutout boasting a signing at some future date.

 _Love, Money and Animals,_ by Celia Higgins. Bestseller already, or at least anticipated to be, by the amount of copies on display. Shifty picks one up off the shelf without so much as reading the back, perhaps because he's curious, perhaps because Celia's name is on it, perhaps because he's planning a long train journey and needs something to keep his mind occupied. Whatever the reason, he slips it inside his overcoat (he's not paying for a bloody _book—_ he may be trying to rehabilitate himself, but paying for necessities is one thing, paying for someone else's thoughts scribbled down and bound together is quite another) and bears it away with him.

Celia had sworn she'd never publish another book. That that 'one, golden thought' she'd had, back in the early '80s was _it_. That she had enough royalties from it to live comfortably forever. Something must have made her change her mind. Boredom? Another, even shinier, _platinum_ thought? The need for more money? He doesn't know, he doesn't care, but he _is_ interested enough to flip open the cover, bending it right over backwards and creasing it in two in the process, settling into his seat and reading.

 _I don't believe in much apart from sex_ , reads the opening line. Predictable Celia. The whole first paragraph, in fact, is just the sort of drivel Celia spouts every day collected on a page, and it's only when the main character's name is mentioned three pages later that Shifty realises it _is_ supposed to be fiction and not an autobiography after all. Could've fooled him. He's heard of writing from life, but this is ridiculous. Does plagiarising your own existence really constitute literature, he wonders. If so, he could simply make a list of all his stays in prison and see how well that sells.

He reads on.

Celia always was good at complaining, interspersing her grumbles occasionally with a bout of philosophising and calling it 'wisdom,' and this book is no exception. The main character, Romana Biggs (it's a good thing Celia never had children, such is her ability to pick names) is a gregarious, blonde, twice-married animal rights activist who takes a job as a cleaner, encounters a variety of familiarly odd characters and goes on to run an animal shelter, and who complains every few paragraphs to _somebody—_ about her sex life, about the plight of poor little pigeons, about themselves, to their faces. Every scene is something he remembers, remembers Celia telling him about or can deduce must have happened to her, albeit with a couple of names and locations changed. And Shifty is beginning to enjoy this, checking Celia's memories against his own, mocking her ridiculous world views in his head (or sometimes out loud, earning the stares of other passengers), laughing out loud, when, in the middle of Chapter Four, something grabs his attention.

A a weaselly, manipulative car thief named Handy marches into the book and Shifty's mind starts to spin.

 _You didn't_.

Within his first page of existence, Handy has stolen a gold necklace from one lover and given it to our loveable protagonist.

 _You did. You bitch._

He'd tear this book to shreds right now, burn it, rip it to pieces with his teeth, flush it down the lav, chuck it onto the train track, destroy it in every way possible, only being angry at Celia's decision to use him as fodder for her book is keeping his mind off the journey ahead, off what may happen when he returns to Liverpool and what sort of reception he can expect. And so he forces himself to keep reading. He squints at the page, giving himself a headache, because he's probably long-sighted but in the precious little time he gets between prison stints he has far better things to do than waste his time with opticians, not caring, because the pain of his anger far outstrips any pain behind his eyeballs.

The affable Romana, in a not-so-coincidental twist of fate, moves next door to where Handy is staying with relatives, and a comedic will-they-won't-they-situation ensues. By Chapter Five they're engaged. _That's not how it happened_ , Shifty thinks huffily. There's a lot more willingness on 'Handy's' part, for one thing, to be embroiled with this obnoxious temptress, to let her destroy his life again. He doesn't remember that. He remembers wishing for peace, world-destroying fury at the prospect of oatmeal raisin biscuits, dodging the hands that reached to straighten the tie he never wanted to wear. He didn't ask for Celia. She forced herself upon him. Practically _made_ him propose. Held a gun to his head (or to other, more sensitive parts) until he loved her. She was (and probably still is) a woman, after all. The same as all the rest. Strip a woman to her core and she's grasping, selfish. Look no further than his mother, friendly soul that she was. That friendliness cost Shifty a childhood, and if it takes him his whole life, and if every member of the fairer sex on the planet becomes a casualty in his game, he will avenge himself somehow. Hurt them before they have the satisfaction of hurting him, leave them reeling, leave scot free and with just a smidgeon more confidence knowing there's another one who can never have him and will pine forever.

Or, she'll simply pen a semi-autobiographical novel and drag him through the mud in it.

Is this all he's come to, then? 46 years of life, and what has he to show for any of it? How will he be remembered? As a character in Celia Higgins' grotesque work of 'fiction'. As a smug, nasty, lazy, selfish caricature of himself, probably played by Jack Davenport in some BBC adaptation down the track, despised and treasured by the general public as the character they love to hate.

Well, he supposes he could be remembered as worse. He _deserves_ to be remembered as worse, given what happened with the Boswells, with the money, with not turning up to Grandad's funeral, with Martina, with Joey, especially with…he shuts his eyes and refuses to entertain the notion of the last one. He has no right to complain, not really. But to be defamed at the hands of Celia Higgins, who can't exactly be called a saint, who's just as dysfunctional as he in her own ways, is downright unjust. It's bloody insulting.

 _My ex had run off with a frosty-faced civil servant, fella number two was living with an Amazonian Swede, number three had married a little lady with titled parents and a face like a fruit bat. And me? I was living next door to the man I loved, who stole Rolls Royces and was never there when you wanted him, and I was doing his cleaning for him. So what did it all mean? I'll tell you. Life is five minutes long, so grab the laughs._

'Heh,' Shifty snorts, but it's not in amusement, or in obedience to the narrator's imperative. It's an ironic sound. Grab the laughs indeed. Well, he's grabbed just about everything else. And then, he reflects, it's usually been grabbed off him again. He's ended up with nothing, save a gaping hole of guilt he's trying to fill with sex and theft and a life far, far away. At least that had plugged the gap, but now he's reopened the wound, is returning to a place he's not welcome, to do something he dreads doing. And instead of being able to brood over that, he's now being spat at by Celia Higgins through a bloody _book_.

He reads on, just to feed his outrage.

 _Poor old Handy. I suppose all that stealing and running off was a cry for help, but no-one ever got close enough to help him. He made sure of that. There was always something he was looking for and missing in his life, but nobody knew what it was. Probably not even Handy himself._

Shifty's blood runs cold, then hot. Pity. His mouth turns into a snarl. Adding an outright injury to the existing insult, she's daring to _pity_ him. She's daring to make (true, but no matter) assumptions about him as if she _knows_ him, as if simply being a part of his life for several years and being engaged to him gives her the right to try and get into his mind and heart, and feel _sorry_ for what she finds. Only three people have a place in his heart, and even they wouldn't get away with this. Celia Higgins has, by way of a publication he was probably never meant to read, ripped him right through, exposed his innards… _felt sorry for him_. Reminded him of the mire of pathetic misery that is his life, and the empty spaces inside him he's always trying to heal, never knowing how.

 _There was no hope for him, really, I suppose_.

No hope.

 _Bloody marvellous, what you think of me_ , Shifty thinks, opening the carriage window and lobbing the book out of it. _Bloody marvellous_.

 _Love, Money and Animals_ lands open on its spine, pages blowing for a split second before the scenery moves forward and it's out of sight.

The train hurtles on, bearing Shifty closer and horrifyingly closer to Liverpool.


	2. Lightning is God striking you down

**Been a long time again, but I've been busy with work. I'll try to update this more frequently- I've nearly got the whole of the next chapter written.**

 **This fic will time-jump back and forth with each chapter, and each chapter will focus on different aspects of Shifty's relationships with Joey, Martina, Celia, Grandad and perhaps some of the others, and they'll all tie together in the end.**

 **This one focusses on Shifty and Joey. Enjoy.**

* * *

 **Lightning is God Striking You Down**

 **1966**

His Auntie Nellie said something once. Shifty hadn't got anybody or anything in his life, she said, because everything he _had_ got belonged to someone else.

She mightn't have been wrong there. Shifty had nothing of his own. Everything he wanted, he couldn't have, whether because he couldn't afford it, didn't deserve it, or it wasn't obtainable. And that had always made him feel incredibly deprived. Everyone walked around with nice things except him. It wasn't fair that he was sitting around with nothing, because nothing was the only thing he could get without doing something wrong.

Even his mother didn't belong to him. She belonged to whichever passing man took her fancy, flinging away her dignity and her autonomy at the drop of a hat, moulding herself to the whims of whichever 'uncle' was residing with them at the time, and Shifty found himself being dragged along, unwanted dead weight, read to by a variety of men clearly paying him attention only to appease his mother, clearly resenting the task and his existence.

They moved from town to town, his dearest Mam following whichever wanderer she wasn't keen to let go of, living wherever he lived, and so Shifty found himself robbed of friends, of the chance to make proper connections before he was whisked away once more.

So what else could he do but learn to compensate? One day, his fingers started to twitch. He shifted in his seat. He shuffled closer to a stranger. And he slipped his hand into that stranger's pocket and pulled out a gold pen.

The man didn't notice, just went on reading his paper, and Shifty held the pen aloft with his chubby little fingers, then stuffed it into the pocket of his shorts and bounded away, marvelling at how incredibly easy the feat had been.

* * *

Nicking things fast becomes an easy way of appeasing the anger which boils up within him. It doesn't make up for anything—the fact that he hasn't really got a mother, the fact that he hasn't really got a home (well, how can he, when they're constantly moving from place to place, when half the places they live in belong to one of those confounded Uncles?), the fact that he hasn't really got a whole lot of anything.

He cherishes his hoard, looking over the little tokens of his triumph, of his revenge on an unjust world—the newspaper from the man going down the street, the doll from the little girl over the road, who had cried to him in a misguided belief that he might know who'd taken it and help her recover it— a vast array of other trinkets, from biros to necklaces. It gives him a twisted sort of joy. If something irks him, if he feels alone, abused, ignored or lacking, then all he need do is reach out and take something, anything, and a smile will creep back onto his face.

It goes on like this for long enough that he forgets life was any different. He's not sure exactly when the name _Shifty_ catches on, who even started it, some sly comment from a hostile schoolmate about _that shifty one_ which soon spreads like wildfire, but he embraces it willingly. At least, if he's Shifty, he's somebody. _Liam_ sits at home, ignored, starting idly into the fireplace while his mother sits on yet another sailor's knee, giggling and flirting and part of her, he's sure, wishing he wasn't in the way, that he wasn't a roadblock on her path to a good time. _Shifty_ has a reputation. He's not liked, particularly, but he's _known_ , he's _acknowledged_. Half the boys he interacts with wish they had the nerve to be him, the other half wish they had the nerve to stop him. It's only a nickname, it's not a particularly flattering one, but for once in his life, he's earned something. That he means something in the world, even if it's something negative.

He wears the name like a medal.

* * *

Things change when they move to England. Shifty's never sure why they do in the first place. Perhaps his mother has finally gone through all the men in Ireland, is looking for new pastures.

For a while, everything stays the same.

And then comes the announcement, one day while he's lying on the hearth rug counting a collection of stolen marbles he's just acquired. And it all becomes clear why they're here, why she dragged him off to a new country out of the blue.

 _I'm getting married_.

Shifty leaps up in shock, his marbles skittering everywhere.

 _I'm getting married,_ she says, as if it's a perfectly normal thing for friendly souls to go around getting married. Friendly souls have a long trail of suitors in tow. Friendly souls move about a lot, with their sons constantly getting in their way. Friendly souls don't _settle down._

In _Livepool._

With a _husband_.

Except, apparently, they do. Shifty is eight years old when his surname is changed against his will from McCrory to Boswell and he's dragged to Liverpool to meet his stepfather and start yet another new life.

Having a stepfather, he soon discovers, is worse than having an uncle.

Uncles spoil him, shower him with attention to try and get on his mother's good side. When uncles come round, he always gets a piece of the chocolate ginger they bring her, occasionally a toffee apple or a packet of sweets of his own or a shiny penny, he's complimented in oily words, taken on outings and patted on the head and proclaimed a 'sweet little lad' (even when he's taken at least two personal items from the bloke's pockets by the end of the day.) Having a stepfather means he's shouted at and disciplined, made to 'earn his keep' by doing the dishes, told to dress 'respectably' and actually get his school work done and respect his elders or else. For some reason, the man thinks he has the right to tell him what to do, and, more unforgivably, thinks he's interested in listening to his boring seafaring stories. Shifty avenges himself by taking the handkerchief from his pocket every single day, then taking and hiding the new packet of them his mother buys when he complains they've all gone missing. It doesn't change anything, though.

After three weeks of being a stepson with a married mother and a horrendous stepfather, Shifty starts making paper dolls and writing the old man's name on them, then tearing them up or putting them in a drawer, as he's been informed will make the person die within a year. Unfortunately for him, he notices no change in the brute's health. Well, voodoo is clearly another thing you can't rely on.

As they haven't got their own place yet (Shifty wonders if this will ever actually happen), they're shoved into the spare rooms in a house belonging to his new stepfather's…cousin's…wife's… parents—it's too confusing for Shifty to keep up with, who's related to who in what way, using a long list to describe a relative, so he simply calls their new landlords _Granny_ and _Grandad_ as all the kids next door do.

His mother decides she has found the perfect babysitter in 'Auntie Nellie' next door, and each morning he finds himself looking forward to being bundled up and shoved onto her doorstep, being let in by his 'Aunt' with a roll of her eyes and a quick Sign-of-the-Cross at his permanently scruffy state, being forced to mingle with her four annoying kids.

It's chaotic. It's awful. Shifty may have hated being ignored, back in the old days, but at least it was just him and his mother, and if his mam was out with one of her admirers, it was just him. He was used to that. Now he has other people to please, other people getting in his way, other people criticising him and telling him what to do and annoying him simply with their existence, and Shifty hates it.

He ponders running away.

He does more than ponder—he filches train timetables and extra money from his stepfather's wallet, has a bag packed all the time, his stolen treasures in easy reach in case of the need for a quick getaway. He hasn't been with his new family a week before he's planned his getaway—or at least, has planned it insofar as he knows when is the best time to slip out the door unnoticed, the way to the station and which train he's going to catch. Where he'll go beyond that, where he'll stay and how he'll afford to live, he hasn't considered much. He knows how to steal, he reasons. That'll help him survive, somehow.

His friendly-traitorous-soul mother and his all-round-bastard stepfather are upstairs (and Shifty knows what they're doing, and doesn't care to think about it), his 'grandparents' are Heaven knows where, and Shifty sees this as his chance. He'll be long gone before they even notice. And likely they will hardly care, will be glad, even. Shifty has always been in the way, a hindrance to others' happiness.

He feels a strange emptiness as he tiptoes through the parlour, stumbling in the dark, because turning on the light would give the game away.

'I did that once.'

Shifty jumps, knocking something over. He cringes at the noise, even though it's all too obvious he's already been rumbled.

'Did what?' he asks nervously.

'Are you daft? What do you think? Ran away, that's what.'

Shifty takes a step back towards the centre of the room, careful not to knock anything else.

Grandad doesn't turn on the light. He sits there, an imperious silhouette in his chair, a light from outside reflecting off his glasses. There's something spectral about him, which seems fitting, as Shifty is terrified. Grandad will prattle on, tut and sigh and then argue with Granny about the right way to bring up boys, and then his stepdad will get wind of the news from the bickering. And then, Shifty thinks, that'll be the end of him. Or, at least, that'll be the end of his whole two-day streak without any form of punishment.

'I wasn't running away,' he lies automatically.

'Then what are you doin' sneakin' off like this?!' Grandad demands. 'Walkin' the canary? Stupid, that's what you all think I am! Stupid!'

'I was, er…you see…' he's good, normally, at bald-faced lies. They come as easily to him as stealing does, and oftentimes the two go hand in hand, the former necessary to cover up the latter. He usually has plenty of time to think them up, perfect them. But standing in front of Grandad, having been caught out unawares, he finds himself completely dumbfounded.

'Bought a loaf of bread…lost the change, I did. Down a drain it went. So I ran away.' It's a story Shifty will hear many times as Grandad gets older, as will everyone else, no doubt, but the first time—this time—it serves a purpose. 'You can't run away forever. 'Specially on no money. You'd starve.'

Of course Grandad would think of food. His Granny is constantly slapping his hand and telling him not to scoff his dinner, chiding him that he'll give himself indigestion, and he, in return, sends back an _ooh, shut up, you silly cow_ across the table. The image comes to Shifty now, and it's so inappropriate, given he's likely in trouble, that he laughs in spite of himself.

'It's no laughing matter, you know. Nasty business, starving. Your body starts eating your muscles after a time. Then you go blind. I saw men go blind. In the war, you know.'

Shifty sees an opening to manoeuvre the conversation away from his present predicament.

'Because they were starving?' he asks, feigning interest.

'No, you daft lad! Because they'd been shot in the 'ead! One of the lads I knew lost an eye! Screamin', he was. That's what happens in wartime, you know. I got out with all me bits and pieces intact.'

In spite of himself, Shifty finds himself sitting down.

'I wore a balaclava, you know. I don't remember why, now. I'm not old, mind. I just don't think of it. But it was there with me, through every battle and every freezin' night I endured…yer Granny was unimpressed by it. Showed it to her, I did, when we met. She said it was a filthy piece of rubbish, all full of 'oles by that time, and she bought me a new one. I never liked that new one.'

He isn't quite sure how they got here, to talking about things wildly off-topic, but Shifty drinks in every word, unsure whether he's genuinely interested or merely holding onto the fact that the longer Grandad keeps talking, the longer he can avoid trouble.

'She's a hard woman, yer Granny. Yeh've probably noticed that. A marvellous cook, though. Just eat and eat, you can. Not like my daughter next door. I'd never eat _her_ muck unless I had to. No idea, she has. No idea.'

Shifty quite likes Auntie Nellie's food himself, but he holds his tongue. Staying on Grandad's good side, he realises, might keep him from telling his stepfather just what's occurred. That man will look for any excuse to chastise him.

Grandad prattles on for at least another quarter of an hour, the topic changing from Granny to the Boswells next door to the cost of living going up. And Shifty finds, as he sits there, slowly becoming more and more entranced by the man's words, that he has put his rucksack on the floor, that he has gone from clutching the train timetable to letting it lie crumpled beside him on the chair. He's missed his train by now, he knows. He's not panicking, though. He begins to volunteer questions, picks up on when to say silent, finds himself, in the span of less than half an hour, transitioning from despising Grandad, another member of a family he has no part in, to really…rather…sort of…liking him. He's oddly cynical, bitter in an endearing way, a welcome change from the syrupy tones of the men out to get his mother's favour or the belittling he receives from his mam's husband—he speaks to Shifty like a grown-up, not some pesky fly everyone secretly wishes could be swatted away.

The light has moved slightly across the room when Grandad stops mid-sentence and peers at him.

'You're not going to go, are you? You're the only one of this mad lot I can stand to be around.'

It's Grandad that makes him change his mind about leaving, rip up his train timetable, get back into bed, decide maybe Liverpool is worth giving a chance. It's Grandad that compels him to stay.

Him, and Joey Boswell.

* * *

Joey Boswell is one year older than him, but when he talks to Shifty, Shifty feels he's being told off by a parent. Or an approximation of one, anyway, given a rosy-cheeked nine-year-old with missing teeth can't exactly pull off that exact authoritative air that parents seem to have in-built. He's a right pompous little prig, is Joey—a Mummy's boy if ever Shifty saw one, who seems to think he's in charge of him simply because he's been put in charge of his own younger brothers and sisters.

'You ought to clean yerself up a bit,' he says firmly to Shifty on the day they meet, looking him up and down, and Shifty wants to smack him in the face, only he's meant to be on his best behaviour and he doesn't fancy a hiding from his heinous stepdad right now.

'You ought to be locked up,' says Joey, when Shifty shows off his stash of stolen treasures, and Shifty _does_ smack him in the face this time, because they're upstairs in one of the boys' bedrooms and there's nobody else around to see it.

It's too bad Joey immediately snitches and Shifty does get that hiding after all.

'You don't scare me,' says Joey calmly, when Shifty returns to warn him he's going to _get_ him for that.

Just to prove he's not to be messed with, Shifty takes Joey's precious stuffed dog from his bed that night and hides it in his own room at Grandad's. That'll teach him, bloody brat. Joey will wake up tomorrow and cry, and then he'll know how Shifty feels every morning when he wakes up and realises all that awaits him is being ignored by his mother, being shouted at by his stepdad and being irritated by his 'cousins.' Feeling like something is missing. Feeling like there's a hole in his chest.

Joey doesn't cry, though. Joey, he soon discovers, is far too clever to let something like that get him down.

Shifty awakes to find his new cousin sitting on the foot of his bed, grinning cheekily, the stuffed dog in one hand and Shifty's prized stolen pocket watch in the other.

'What're yeh doin' with that?!' he demands, lunging for him. Joey dances out the way, and Shifty realises he's been tied up in his own sheets. Clever little bastard. He's thought of everything.

'Give it!' he snarls. Oh, he's going to _kill_ Joey when he gets out of this. Nobody steals from him. He does the stealing. And nobody touches the pocket watch it took three attempts to nick, the watch that remains his biggest triumph to date. That's just crossing a line, that is.

'Trade?' says Joey, holding the watch just out of his reach. He holds the dog aloft in the other hand, weighing them up. When Shifty doesn't respond, Joey waves the watch in front of his nose and then quickly draws it back, reminding him just what's on the line. He's a good negotiator. That's something Shifty has never been all that good at, is negotiating. He operates stealthily and quietly, just takes what he wants on the sly. Joey fights for it. That, whether Shifty likes it or not, commands respect.

Shifty grumbles, nods at Joey and his treasure is deposited in his lap.

'Cheers,' Joey flashes a grin and disappears.

It's only when he moves to get up that Shifty realises Joey hasn't untied him.

He's never met anyone who could outsmart him before. Shifty has always fancied himself the cleverest, most resourceful youngster there ever was. But Joey has not only foiled his plan, but got one over on him. No-one has ever done that.

Shifty decides he's never loved anybody so much.

* * *

It takes a few false starts, and a few boring afternoons watching Joey boss around dull Jack and even duller Jimmy, but before a month is out, Shifty and the eldest Boswell are what he supposes would be called 'friends.' Perhaps, given they spend most of their time together, he could tentatively call them 'best friends'—but as he's never had any friend at all, let alone one he'd consider the best of them all, Shifty keeps the title to himself, brings it out in his mind and plays around with it when he's alone.

He'd imagined, of course, that if he were to have a best friend, they'd be a rapscallion like him, a partner in crime.

What he gets instead, as it turns out, is an overly-pompous, bossy little bastard with a huge hypocritical streak. Joey tells off Jack and Jimmy, tells _on_ them to Auntie Nellie when need be, then turns around and lies his way out of his own petty misbehaviours, appearing proud of himself for having a 'wicked side' that to Shifty, quite frankly, is pathetic. Yes, Joey can be clever, and yes, Joey can steal his things in retaliation, but he's got no dedication to being truly dodgy.

His dedication to his family, Shifty discovers, is truly something else.

And once Shifty is an established presence in the household, that family includes him, apparently. And while the afternoons with Jack and Jimmy are boring, school lunchtimes become enjoyable with a companion around, his homework becomes easier with Joey's guidance. Even his treasures become more precious, because he can show them to Joey, watch the horrified look on his step-cousin's face and get a whole new kick out of them.

They establish a routine without even realising they're doing it. Joey hangs back for Shifty after school, his whining brothers waiting impatiently and kicking him as they head home, and though Shifty would rather walk alone, he appreciates Joey's attempt to keep him company.

They work for a while in the kitchen, then while Nellie prepares dinner, they sit out in the street on wicker chairs, imitating Grandad as long as he's not around to notice, Shifty showing off the latest additions to his collection of stolen items.

'This,' Shifty is saying today, bringing out a penknife, 'I got from that bloke in the next street. Easy to nick from, he was.'

' 'Im from the docks with the limp?'

'That's the one.'

Joey's face turns to horror. 'You can't steal from him!'

'Ye can't steal this, ye can't steal that…'

'He's got a limp! He's suffered enough!'

'Suffered?! I only took a penknife!'

'Put that away!' Joey squeaks as Shifty flashes the first blade in demonstration. 'You're downright dangerous, you are, and with a knife you'll probably end up in gaol for murder! I'd take that off you but I might get cut.'

'And why would I cut ye? Why?'

Joey shakes his head, turns to his schoolwork, which he's insisted on taking out into the street, despite Shifty's protestations that this is leisure time.

'Joeeeey!'

They're interrupted as Joey's sister Aveline toddles out onto the street. A pudgy little three year old with plastic bracelets all down her arms, she's demanding, throws tantrums, and is probably, at this stage, Shifty's least favourite of his new cousins.

Aveline pauses in front of them for a moment, pushing each of her bracelets down her arm as though counting on an abacus, then with the sudden recklessness of a small child, she flings them all to the floor and admires the resulting mess with glee.

Shifty ignores her. He's got better things to do than encourage a toddler. Things, for example, like examining all the blades on his knew pocketknife, and trying out a few on the seams of his stepdad's best jackets.

'Joey!'

Joey is clearly in the middle of something, and Shifty waits for him to yell at his sister, the way he certainly would if a) _his_ sister interrupted him and b) he had a sister in the first place.

But Joey simply smiles.

'Hey, you.' He pats her ringlets and goes back to whatever dull sheet of sums he's working on.

'Joeeeeeeeeeeey! Up.' Aveline isn't giving up. She raises her chubby arms to him, and Joey sighs, puts his school work aside and leans forward, picking up the bangles from the ground.

'You don't 'ave to look after her, ye know,' Shifty says.

His cousin shrugs. 'Someone 'as to.'

'Yeh've got a mam!' Shifty explodes. He's not having this, not when Auntie Nellie cooks and cleans and follows the kids around nagging them to get on with their homework and forcing them to eat everything on their plates and all the things mams do that his is too busy being a friendly soul to ever do.

'Yeh, I know.'

'And a dad.' Unlike his 'father,' who will never be his father, his real father, a distant blur in his mother's memory, and a miscellaneous array of blokes trouncing through his old front door, stuffing crystallised ginger into his gob to keep him quiet.

'Sort of.'

Shifty scowls. 'Sort of?!'

'He's not really here much,' Joey says, gazing at nothing in particular as he talks. 'He comes home for dinner and on the weekends and he does play football with us when he feels like it, but it's not as if…it's not…' he chews on his lip. ' _I_ know more about Aveline than he does.'

Come to think of it, Shifty's only seen his Uncle Freddie once or twice in all the time he's been here. He's an agreeable enough bloke, with a moustache Shifty can't help be impressed by, but now he really thinks about it, no, Freddie Boswell isn't really much of a father. Or around. Or helpful when he is around.

Hearing her name, Aveline's face lights up, and she drops most of her bangle collection on the ground again in a bid to toddle over to her brother.

'Up, Joey!' she says, holding up her chubby arms, and Joey obliges, settling the child into his lap. The tiny girl squints at Shifty for a moment, seems to decide he's not worth speaking to and commences playing with what appears to be one of Nellie's necklaces, chattering absently to herself about 'princesses' and 'stars' and 'beautiful ladies' and a host of other little-girly words Shifty doesn't care about.

Joey looks at Shifty as if this proves his point.

'If someone asked her to pick her dad out in a crowd, she'd prob'ly point at me.'

And Shifty thinks that is the most stuck-up, conceited thing he has ever heard in his life, only, he realises as he watches his cousins for a moment, it's probably true. Joey takes a very serious interest in his siblings' lives, and though he can't claim to know much about it, not having any of his own, he's sure most boys their age don't invest this much into the task. At least this new revelation sort of makes sense of things, helps him understand _why_. If Uncle Freddie isn't around, if Joey feels he _has_ to step into that role to make sure his siblings are taken care of, it explains why that determination to act like a parent towards _him_ exists. Joey thinks he hasn't got a choice.

'Where does he go? Your dad?'

Joey considers. 'Down the docks sometimes. Mam says pub. Or a tart. Or lots of tarts. I hope not.'

He learns against the arm of the sofa, puts his head glumly in his hand. 'I hope not.'

'My mam's one of those,' Shifty says decisively.

'One of what?'

'A tart.'

'That's a _horrible_ thing to say!' Joey would probably try and put him across his knee if Aveline wasn't sitting there.

'It's true!' Shifty shoots back. 'That's _why_ I don't have a dad. She probably can't remember which one he is. At least _you_ don't have all those uncles' names to remember! At least you don't have strange men with disgusting-smelling cologne tryin' to cosy up to _you_ just so they can climb into bed with your mother and—'

'Shifty, don't _talk_ like that!' Joey scolds, his hands clapping over Aveline's ears. Aveline's eyes widen in surprise, and she tries to wriggle free. Joey holds her where she is, keeps his hands firmly in place, ignoring the whine of protest she starts up.

'She doesn't even understand!'

'Neither should you, at your age!'

'How could I not?! It goes on all the time in my house! What am I supposed to do, then? Pretend it doesn't exist?!' He doesn't bother to point out that Joey can't particularly call himself worldly-wise for twelve odd months' more experience than him. _Your age_. Huh. He feels himself hating Joey again.

'If you talk about that sort of thing in front of Aveline, I _will_ tell Mam.'

'Oh, you'll tell Mam, will you? Well, go on, then, go on! See if I care what she does to me!'

Joey stares him down.

Shifty stares back.

Aveline manages to free herself from Joey's grasp and scowls at him.

'No,' she says, shaking a finger at him. 'I don't _like_ that.'

'It's for your own good, Princess,' he says.

'Why?'

'Oh…no reason.' He can't seem to find the words to explain that _Shifty was doing something bad yet again_. 'Why don't you go and see what Jimmy and Jack are doin'?'

' 'cause I want to stay here,' Aveline says, confused.

'No you don't.' Joey sets her down on her feet. 'I heard Jack had bought some toffees with his pocket money…'

That has her running along. Joey watches her with an affection not entirely appropriate for his age.

'You're not her dad,' Shifty says.

'No, I'm not!' His tone switches from cooing-Daddy to tetchy as soon as he turns back around. 'But I'm her brother. I have to look _after_ her!'

Shifty thinks on it for a split second, and decides it's not worth falling out over. Joey's just as stupid as he is, in his own way. His Dad's never around, in the same way Shifty's Mam's never around, and they're just finding their own daft methods of compensating. At least Joey's way won't get him into any trouble.

'You don't have to look after everyone. _I_ don't need looking after.' Shifty reaches into his pocket, pulls out the marbles he'd taken off the boy down the road yesterday, holds them out as a peace offering.

'Wanna play?'

Joey looks at the contents of his outstretched hand and sighs.

'Oh, Shifty,' he says, sounding old again, 'You really do need lookin' after.'

* * *

Though he's not a fan of spending all his time in Auntie Nellie's company, he has to admit she cooks better than his own mam. When they have dinner at Number 30, Shifty always chooses the seat next to Joey, partially so they can conspire and a large part so he has better access to the meat dish to pilfer from it.

Nellie serves each of her children in term, ignoring protests at being presented with food items they don't like, then, with a glare at Shifty, plonks the worst of everything on his plate and slams it in front of him. Uncle Freddie has gone off somewhere again and she's in a foul mood—not that she doesn't seem to be in a foul mood most of the time anyway.

Shifty looks to his mam, hoping for some sort of defence, but she's busy trying to not-so-obviously plant her hand on her husband's leg.

There's an audible groan from his left. Shifty glances over to find Joey's nose turning up at two frankly perfect-looking slices of roast lamb.

'I didn't want meat.'

Nellie pauses in the middle of serving herself to give him a warning look.

'You'll eat what you're given.'

'It's a baby sheep!'

'Joey! That's enough of this nonsense about animals! You're eating your meat and that's the end of it!'

Joey curls his lip.

'PRAYERS!' Nellie booms, and the little Boswells immediately clasp their hands together; even Aveline puts her braceleted little fists together and closes her eyes. Not Shifty, though. Afraid as he is of God's wrath, he's got an idea.

'We thank Thee, O Father…' Nellie begins imperiously, and Shifty springs into action, leaning over the table with a deftness he usually applies to stealing. It's done before any of them have even noticed, and when Auntie Nellie utters the _Amen_ , Shifty is sitting there, hands folded like all the others, pretending to open his eyes for the first time since they began.

Nellie glances over at him and shakes her head.

'Some people's _greed_ ,' she scoffs, and turns to her plate.

Shifty glances at his reflection in his glass. His cheeks bulge like a hamster. Oh well. He'll let them think this is greed, if that's what they want. He chews with difficulty, trying to navigate his mouth around the two slices of lamb he's stuffed in all at once.

Beside him, Joey starts. Shifty daren't look over, but he can imagine the surprise on Joey's face to find his plate piled high with two servings of parsnips and his meat missing.

Shifty can't help laughing to himself. Unfortunately, laughing to yourself with a large quantity of roast lamb in your mouth isn't the best idea. He chokes, splutters and his face turns red as he frantically tries to gasp while keeping the lamb tucked firmly within his jaws. The whole table's attention is now on him, a mixture of amusement and disappointment being thrown his way.

Nellie stares at him with disapproval bordering on disdain.

'You'll get indigestion. Do you know what gluttony is?!'

Joey's eyes meet his. His cousin smiles, and Shifty twists up the corners of his over-full mouth in return.

* * *

Shifty isn't going to school today, he's decided.

He's never had much interest in the institution. It's all tapioca puddings and no friends, compulsory tasks he cannot and doesn't want to understand, being shouted at and being whacked and nothing worth anything to steal to compensate. It's walking home with the Boswell children, listening to Jimmy whining, rubbing his bruised shins, because Jack invariably kicks them when he walks too slowly, being told off by Joey whether he's done anything or not, because everyone assumes, of course, that he has. And to cap it all off, he then has to spend the afternoon in Number 28 alone, because at Nellie's assistance, the Boswells now all sit down at their kitchen table and get on with their homework, away from his 'influence', denying him Joey's help, while nobody particularly cares if he does his or not—and more often than not, he doesn't.

He doesn't feel like all that today. It's been ages since he actually _went_ anywhere, _did_ anything, felt like life was worth living. He feels like going down the docks and watching the water lap at the boats, seeing what's good to pilfer from the new sweet shop in the high street, finding a patch of sun, if there is one, and just _basking_ , being free and unencumbered. He's allowed that, he decides. It's been a difficult few months adjusting to this life—in Kelsall Street, in Liverpool, in _England,_ with a new family—and he isn't enjoying it. Grandad likes him; his stepfather doesn't. Joey seems like a friend sometimes; at others, he's enemy number one, quick to round on Shifty, dob him in, sacrifice Shifty's hide to maintain his reputation as the golden child. Jack and Jimmy are wary of him, too under Auntie Nellie's influence—and she wrote him off on day one as a bad lot and refuses to change her mind. Shifty has gone from being ignored to being antagonised with no escape, and it's only fair, he decides, to do what he does best, and steal something to compensate. He'll steal back some of the time he used to have to himself, spend a few glorious hours on his own, enjoying himself, away from disapproving eyes and near-constant judgement.

So when he leaves the house this morning, satchel slung over his shoulder, instead of going round the corner and up the street, he goes round the corner, down a backstreet, doubles back after he's watched the others go past and on towards school without him, and heads off merrily towards the docks.

' _And_ what d'you think _you're_ doin', then?'

Shifty jumps, whirls around, and there's Joey, sitting on a wall, swinging one foot back and forth as though he hasn't a care in the world.

Shifty panics. Being dobbed in by Joey may as well be a death sentence, given what his stepdad will do when he finds out.

'I could ask you the same thing!' he splutters.

'Same as you, I imagine.' Joey grins. 'Wagging. Bunkin' off. Skivin'.'

Well he'll be. Joey Boswell, pinnacle of all things noble, Mammy's boy and obnoxious little snitch, playing truant. He doesn't quite believe it.

'Well, _technically_ ,' Joey says, looking smug at having used a big word, 'I've got 'flu. Or will have had.'

Shifty frowns, uncomprehending. 'Wha'?'

'I have got a note after all. Little tip: never do anythin' half-arsed. And never get caught. See? Brilliant.'

Joey seems to have been spouting a string of phrases that mean nothing, but when he passes a crumpled piece of paper to Shifty, he suddenly understands.

It's a sick note. A genuine, actual sick note, excusing Joey from school today. It looks real. It can't be, though. It just can't.

He blinks, squints at it, but there's no mistaking Nellie Boswell's loopy handwriting.

'Did your mam actually _agree_ to this?' He finds that hard to believe. Nellie will administer half a disprin and march her children through the school gates no matter how much they complain of being ill, no matter how much they plead and bargain to be allowed to stay in bed. Only a flu of nearly pneumonic proportions could get them out of it—Jimmy had got bronchitis after sitting for ages in the rain trying to draw the clouds, while still recovering from a regular cold, and, Shifty had concluded, he would have hated to be in his cousin's shoes. Being ill in this family, he has learned, doesn't guarantee a rest—a couple of days off school isn't worth being isolated, having Grandad's disgusting home remedies shoved down one's throat and being bundled up in a blanket and dragged to the doctor. There is no way Joey could have wheedled a sick note out of Nellie and be sat here, swinging his legs back and forth with vigour, his cheeks rosy, his eyes twinkling, absolutely, without a doubt, _well_. There isn't so much as an ounce of sickness in his body.

Joey grins, takes the note back and hands Shifty a blue sheet of paper. He takes it, dumbfounded, and then it dawns on him what his cousin has done when he scrunches it in his hand and finds his fingertips have turned blue.

' _Carbon paper?!'_ Shifty says incredulously.

Joey winks.

Shifty snatches back the sick note and can't believe he missed it the first time round—it's not Nellie's handwriting at all, it's a _carbon copy_ of Nellie's handwriting.

'When did ye do that?!' he demands.

'When our Jack had 'flu. I traced the real one when she was out the room. Always good to have a copy of these things, just in case, you know. It might come in handy…say…if I needed a day off school to get better…'

'You're not even sick!'

'But,' says Joey, 'I might be. One day.'

'You really think they'll fall for that, do ye?'

' _You_ didn't notice it was a copy.'

'Yeah, but I…' Shifty can't really find a way to complete his argument, because Joey is right. It's obvious now, but he wouldn't have noticed had Joey not pointed it out to him. Joey is using a tactic Shifty himself employs when nicking things—if people aren't expecting something, they don't look too closely.

'Told you. It's all in the execution. That's where you slip up.'

Shifty resents that. He knows more about execution than Joey, and _anyway…_

'You have a go at me when _I_ do things like this!'

'Yeah, _but_ ,' Joey says, flicking the paper in Shifty's face, 'I don't get caught.'

He's got to admire that.

'So what are we gonna do with our day off, then?' Shifty asks. ' 'Cause there's this shop in the high street they say is easy to…'

'C'mon,' says Joey, grabbing him by the arm. 'Let's go down the docks. I wanna watch me Dad set sail.'

Joey might know how to _pull off_ a scheme, but his schemes are soft in comparison to Shifty's. Shifty steals. Joey steals extra time with his dad.

Joey, for all his notions that secretly, on the inside, is a bit of a criminal in disguise as a moral citizen, is nothing of the kind. He hasn't got it in him. He is a moral citizen pretending to be a criminal in disguise.

(And, as it turns out, he _does_ get caught after all. Shift has heard Nellie's anger come through the walls, but this time, both houses shake from the force of it. Well, so much for Joey's smugness that he never gets caught, too.)

(Years later, when Joey's oh-so-sneaky number plate business gets rumbled by the tax man, Shifty will think back to this incident and shake his head. And Joey tells _him_ he never learns.)

* * *

They're doing their homework in front of the fire since Nellie's out and can't keep them apart, Shifty sore after his stepdad caught him bunking off school and pilfering from the Coop, Joey sore after Aveline had thwacked him in the face with a plastic bead necklace, when Joey turns to him.

'Why d'you do it?'

'What?'

'Steal things.'

A million answers run through Shifty's head, one of which is the truth. He dismisses that one, picks another from his repertoire.

'Why not? It's a living, isn't it?'

'I want better for you.'

'You worry about yer own self,' Shifty snaps. 'You just wanna be a better criminal than me, don't ye? With yer barmy little schemes. And then you turn and lecture me like you're me dad. Make up yer mind which Joey ye wanna be.'

'I can be both. And I don't steal things, anyway. You wanna watch it. I won't end up in gaol. You might.' Joey turns back to his work, his pencil scratching the page in an irritating way that's just begging for Shifty to steal his pencil.

Shifty seethes for a minute, twitches trying not to take Joey's writing implement away from him, then looks from his cousin to his own work, filled with crossings-out and surely-wrong answers. Joey usually helps him. He puts his annoyance to the side, nudges Joey, pulls out a grin.

'If you wanna make summat better of me, you could finish mine as well.' He holds up his maths book hopefully.

'Better if you do it yourself.'

'Prig.'

Joey just grins at him and keeps on scribbling.

* * *

' 'ey. Come 'ere.'

Shifty scrambles up, not even caring he doesn't know what Joey wants. Auntie Nellie is out shopping; he's not sure where the others are, and Joey has him by the arm, dragging him towards the back garden.

'Look.'

'It's a ladder.'

'Yeah I _know_ ,' Joey elbows him. 'Me Dad left it there.'

'So?'

'When 'e was checkin' the roof tiles.'

'So?'

Joey rolls his eyes.

' _So,_ let's go!'

'Up there? What for?'

Joey's already three rungs up.

'See the view I s'pose.' He's halfway up now, and it's so typically Joey, this small act of rebellion for something as meaningless as appreciating a view, that Shifty, while usually annoyed by Joey's petty attempts at wrongdoing, is suddenly overwhelmed with affection for him.

And, even though a part of him is assessing how difficult this climb is, in case he ever needs to use a ladder to assist him in stealing in the future, it's this affection, this overwhelming feeling that he's got a real friend, perhaps even a brother, in a way, that guides him to follow Joey up the ladder and onto the roof.

It is slightly terrifying, hoisting himself up onto the top of the house, seeing the distance down and knowing that one slip could end his life. It's also exhilarating, and, Shifty has to admit, quite beautiful.

They can see for ages from here, the roofs sloping off towards the horizon, the Mersey in its dingy glory, dark clouds touching the tops of the tower blocks in the distance.

'Great, isn't it?' Joey is leaning back against the roof as though falling is no risk at all, his hands behind his head.

'Yeh. S'pose.'

Shifty slowly crawls over, settles beside him, fingers clawing at the tiles just in case he should slip. As he relaxes, though, and finds he's quite firmly lodged, he allows himself to let go and rest his hands in his lap. With Liverpool spread out before him, and Joey beside him, Shifty feels…unstoppable. It's the same feeling he gets when pulling a purse from a handbag and getting away with it—as if he matters in the world, as if the anger that often threatens to consume him is anchored at bay, and the waters are calm enough to keep it there.

They sit for a while, quiet but content as the dark clouds slowly inch closer.

A streak of lightning illuminates the sky, arrestingly beautiful. It's stunning, and at a safe distance, perfectly harmless, yet it unnerves Shifty. He turns to Joey, nudges him.

'Mam said if you lie God'll strike you down. Sometimes,' Shifty confides, lowering his voice as if he's worried God is listening in, 'I think storms are 'im coming for me. Lightning, you know.'

'I lie sometimes,' Joey says. He's the only person Shifty knows who could come out with a comment like that and still sound angelic. 'He's never got me yet. Maybe 'strike you down' means somethin' different, and storms are just…storms.'

Makes sense, in a rubbish ten-year-old sort of way, but Shifty isn't entirely convinced. Joey's lies are probably smaller and whiter than his. Not to mention the fact that he hasn't stolen anything.

'I'm still frightened.' If it were anyone but Joey, he'd have to threaten them to keep this quiet. With Joey...Shifty doesn't even think about it. It comes easy, sharing things with him. Even more so than his own mother (though she's too busy being friendly usually to listen), than Grandad. It's as if Joey is the only person who can get him to open up his mind and scoop out thoughts.

'Of lightning?' Joey asks.

'Of God.'

'Oh.' He ponders this for a while, trying to make sense of it, Shifty supposes. For a good little Catholic boy like Joey, with nothing more than the odd discrepancy, it doesn't make sense to be afraid of a supreme authority figure. Even if he had the need to, Joey's could probably charm his way back into the Book of Life. Shifty, though. Shifty is a bad little Catholic boy, with a criminal record longer than some convicts'. He has every reason to be afraid. Even now he looks to the sky, half-expecting himself to suddenly be punished for his sins.

He's staring at the steelwool clouds, hoping he doesn't suddenly get zapped by a thunderbolt, when he finds an arm around him.

'What else are you scared of?' Joey shuffles closer, almost leaning on him.

Shifty considers.

'Earwigs.'

Joey laughs then, the echoing sound of it almost as loud as the approaching thunder.

'They eat yer brain!' Shifty insists, but Joey just cackles even louder.

'They do—all right, then, what are yeh afraid of?'

That shuts Joey up. 'Er.'

'What?! Eh?! Bet it's not better than mine.'

'Er…' Joey says again, almost embarrassed. 'Jellyfish.'

'You've never even _seen_ a jellyfish!' Shifty says incredulously.

'But. I might do. One day.'

'No one's seen one! There's nothin' in the water round 'ere but soot and sheaths.'

'And what?'

Shifty decides he can't be bothered to explain the facts of life to his sort-of cousin who's one year older than him.

'And knackers' yards,' says Joey.

'Eh?'

'Knackers' yards scare me.'

'We'll go and burn 'em all down, then,' Shifty replies absently.

Joey gives him a horrified look.

'Then the animals'd die.'

'They're gonna die anyway.'

'That's not the point.'

Shifty shakes his head. Joey's points are obscure, sometimes.

'You wouldn't do that,' Joey says at length.

'Eh?'

'Burn down places. You're a good person, really.'

'Am I?'

Shifty has no idea where Joey gets this from. He's never been a good person, nor has he really tried to be. But Joey insists upon it all the same.

'Yeah,' Joey sighs, shuffling closer.

And Shifty decides, though it'll never be true, that if Joey is willing to think of him as 'good', he'll take it. It's nice to have someone think the best of him, for once.

They stay on the roof until the storm is almost upon them, and the rain has lashed them by the time they climb back through Shifty's window.

Shifty's hair is sopping, his clothes are drenched, and he's probably going to get pneumonia, but he doesn't care.

* * *

It doesn't last long, his life in Kelsall Street.

Not many things in Shifty's life last long.

His mother's marriage implodes after nearly a year, as it was always going to. Relationships never last long with her—the call of friendliness and sailors is too strong. Shifty doesn't care much about the loss of his stepfather. He never liked him anyway.

But when one loses a Boswell, it seems, they lose the entire Boswell family. His mother won't stay in a house with relatives that aren't really relatives, Nellie seems only too happy to support this arrangement, and despite the grumbles of Grandad, losing his new 'favourite grandchild' (Nellie hits the roof when she hears that), Shifty's desperate pleas to stay settled in one place, and Joey's 'tactile' arguments as to why Shifty and his mam should be allowed to remain next door (a ten-year-old's tactile arguments aren't particularly clever, though, despite what he may think), they're leaving. Arrangements are made, boxes are packed.

Shifty spends the last night in his nearly-empty room at Grandad's, staring forlornly at the small stack of boxes containing his belongings. Tomorrow he'll be gone, and his life here, his new family, whom he's begrudgingly started to like, and Joey—his only friend, his little partner in crime, only not so much of a criminal, Joey—will all be gone.

He can't bear it.

When it gets late enough that he can be sure both families are asleep, Shifty slips out of the house, lets himself into Number 30, creeps up the stairs and into the children's bedroom and climbs into Joey's bed.

Joey is asleep, his mouth open as if to catch flies. Shifty elbows him.

'Joey.'

'Hmf.'

'Joey!'

His cousin opens his eyes, squints through the darkness, and then glares at him.

'Bog off.'

'Well that's nice.'

Joey groans. 'It's the middle of the night!'

'It's twelve.'

'That _is_ the middle of the night.'

'Well I can't sleep.'

Joey hesitates, glances over at his siblings. They're all out for the count. He turns back to Shifty, holds up the covers.

'Get in.'

Shifty climbs in beside Joey, wincing as his cousin's ice block feet come into contact with him.

'You ever heard of socks?'

'Eh?'

Shifty shakes his head. 'Nothing.'

Something glints on the small chest of drawers beside Joey's bed. As his cousin is rearranging the blankets, Shifty's hand automatically makes a grab for it. Well, he's going to be gone soon. Might as well get his kicks where he can. Joey will forgive him.

'What's wrong, then?' Joey has turned back to him, the sleepiness slowly wearing off his face. That's what Shifty loves about him, sometimes. He might make fun of it, but Joey's determination to play protector to his siblings (and Shifty, now) means he's quickly on the alert, ready to try and solve whatever problem comes his way.

He wants to spill it all out to Joey—how much he hates the idea of leaving, how much he wishes Auntie Nellie would despise him a little less and adopt him so he could stay here forever, how there's probably no hope for him once he leaves Joey's influence (not that there was much hope if he stayed, but there was a glimmer of possibility, and that was enough for him).

Instead, he skirts around it.

'D'you ever worry about the future?'

Joey tilts his head back and looks toward the ceiling.

'Yeah. I need to make a lot of money when I grow up. So's I can look after me mam in her old age.'

Shifty snorts. 'Most people wanna make money for _themselves_.'

'I'll own a chain of businesses,' Joey says as if he hasn't heard, 'each one of 'em successful.'

He notes that Joey hasn't specified what _kind_ of businesses, nor, probably, does he even know what kind of businesses, but at least he has a plan. Shifty has never really planned further ahead than a week or two at a time. Right now, he can see nothing but tomorrow's impending move. It's never really hit him that one day he's got to grow up and find a purpose.

'What d'you think I'll be?' he asks, curious.

'A pirate,' Joey says without hesitation. 'You're already good at plundering 'nall that.'

'I don't plunder.'

'Yeah? Whatcha take off me bedside table just now?'

Shifty swallows. How did he know? Nothing escapes Joey's watchful eye; it's frightening. He must have some kind of ESP.

'Just…20p,' he says guiltily, feeling his stomach turn. He'd wanted to keep that quiet, steal it away, but no point in lying to Joey. He never falls for it.

His cousin holds out his hand. 'Give it.'

Shifty sighs, drops it into his waiting palm. Joey's fingers close around it momentarily, and then he sighs, shakes his head, opens his digits and holds it out again.

'Take it.'

'Eh?'

'I'm _giving_ it to you,' Joey insists. There's a note of frustration in his voice; Shifty can't tell why.

'Don't want it now.'

'Don't be daft,' Joey prises Shifty's hand open and presses the coin into it. 'I wouldn't have begrudged you it. I just don't want you takin' it without askin'. You can 'ave it if you let me give it yer.'

Shifty doesn't know what to say to that. He'd done wrong, snatched his cousin's possession—and not for the first time, not even close—and Joey has not only granted him clemency but offered him the money as well.

He turns the coin over in his hand. It's slimy in that awful way coins get when held in a sweaty palm, though whether it's his sweat or Joey's he couldn't say. It leaves a disgusting metallic smell behind on his hand when he relocates it to his pocket.

'Joey,' he says, rubbing his hands together, 'why d'you bother?'

'Umf?' he realises Joey is dozing off. He shoves him.

' _Joey_. Why d'you bother?'

'Bother with what?'

'Tryin' to make me a good person. Givin' me things so I don't take 'em. It doesn't matter, you know.'

'Why d'ya think it doesn't?'

'There's no point, is there? I'm a bad lot. Everyone says so. I'm rubbish. I'm never gonna be a good person.'

'Course you are.'

'I'm only good as long as you make me. And that's gonna change, isn't it?' Shifty's found an opening to get into talking about what's on his mind. And about time. All this generosity stuff has pushed them along on a tangent for far too long.

'Why would it?'

'Well, when me mother gets settled in the new place, and finds some new Uncle to be friendly with—and she will, she will—well, I won't see you as much anymore. I might not see ye ever again.' He's nine years old—far too old for tears, he thinks, and he doesn't usually shed them anyway—but one still comes, still threatens to leak. He's losing his one and only real friend. It's just not fair.

Joey turns his head and smiles that cheeky smile through the darkness.

'What makes you think you're gettin' away that easily?'

'Well…'

'You think I'd give up on yer because you moved away?'

'I won't see you as often,' he repeats.

'Says who?'

' _Well_. For starters, we won't be next door to each other anymore. I won't be poppin' round to outstay my welcome with Auntie Nellie while Mam and Boswell man…'

'Uncle—' Joey begins sternly, but is cut off.

'My not-father, have time to themselves to…'

'Not in front of the children!'

'The "children" are all asleep,' Shifty says testily. 'And anyway, you're still a kid yerself. Don't go talkin' about "the children" as if you're their dad.'

'Yeah, yeah,' Joey shifts closer, elbows him. ' _Anyway_. Back to what we were _talking about_. I'll still see yer, won't I? We'll find a way. You write me tellin' me where you're livin' and we'll go from there.'

'And you'll never write back.' The hurt finds its way into his voice before Shifty can stop it. This is what happens. He starts to make friends, they move, he loses them. He's used to it. Such is life. Losing Joey, however, is the worst kind of pain he could imagine. The only _real_ friend he's ever had. The only person who's cared enough to want better for him than to earn an infamous reputation stealing things. The only person who's ever thought there might be more to him, that actually makes an effort to help him rather than abandoning him for too far gone. And soon he'll be out of his life. People don't keep in touch. It's never happened once before. People are only in your life, he knows, while it's convenient for them.

' _Shifty,_ ' Joey sounds horrified, 'I wouldn't give up on yer! I'd _never_ give up on yer!'

'What makes you different from any of the rest of 'em?' Shifty shakes his head. 'Why would you bother to try and stay friends when it's not easy for you?'

'Be _cause_ ,' he says through gritted teeth, 'I don't give up on people. Not them I care about.'

Shifty falls silent.

'And eh,' Joey adds. 'You're family, after all.'

'Not really,' Shifty says flatly.

Joey nudges him. 'Fam-i-leeeeee!' He insists. 'Always. Even if you're not related _exactly_ anymore. You're family to me. You're _my_ family. That doesn't change.'

Joey stares at him so severely that Shifty doesn't dare not believe him. Unsure exactly how to respond, a little overwhelmed, Shifty reaches out a hand, squeezes Joey's shoulder.

'You're my best friend,' he says softly. 'Well. You're my only friend. And, you know. It's all been so much better since I met you and I wouldn't want…'

'Shifty?'

'What?'

'Shut up, will yer. I wanna sleep.'

Shifty, still overwhelmed by his cousin's declaration of dedication, obliges Joey and does indeed shut up.

* * *

The morning comes far too quickly.

Before Shifty knows it, he's sitting gloomily in his new, tiny, boxlike room, in his new, tiny, boxlike flat in his new, crowded, boxlike street, because they can't afford nice things now there isn't a man to take care of his mother (for now. He expects there will be a sailor on her doorstep in a week, and come a week's time, there is indeed a sailor wearing a grin and sporting a bouquet of half-dead flowers).

He's lost his family. He's lost Joey, probably—even if Joey does keep his promise to write, it's not the same. And what's more, to add insult to injury, he's lost his precious gold watch in the move. The most precious thing he's ever stolen, gone, along with the most precious thing he ever had—his little family with Joey, and Jack and Jimmy and baby Aveline, and Granny and Grandad, even Auntie Nellie, even though she didn't like him. He supposes he stole them, in a way. They weren't his family to keep, not really. They belonged to his stepfather, not him.

He still wants them, though. His or not, he still wants them.

* * *

The days pass agonisingly slowly. No letters come. He's promised a trip to Kelsall Street, but his mam backs out at the last minute, and whether this is to avoid her ex-husband or because of a new lover on the scene Shifty can't be certain.

He tries to write to Joey, but the words don't flow, and he ends up tearing it up.

Shifty is sent to yet another school, puts in about half an hour and then finds new ways of truanting, so that in the course of a week he's only graced the classroom for about forty-five minutes in total.

He steals. It's lost its lustre, somewhat, now he's experienced something better that he wants back, but he turns to it like an alcoholic to a bottle—greedily, desperately. For a brief moment, a new acquisition fills the hole inside him, but it never lasts. The hole seems to gape more than it used to, now he's seen what he might have had.

His moods fade to black. Every day is a trial.

And then, one day, the mail falls through their letterbox, bearing with it a little parcel with Shifty's name on.

A little parcel with Shifty's name on and Joey's handwriting on the front.

He can't snatch it up fast enough. It's off the mat and in Shifty's room before his mother even has the chance to take one step towards the front door, and then he's tearing at the paper, trying to preserve the section with Joey's writing but allowing himself to pulverise the rest of it.

He pushes one finger inside while trying to rip it open with his teeth. The contents feel cold, metallic. He's made a big enough hole now, tips the package upside down, shakes it…

….and a flash of something golden tumbles out onto the floor.

His gold watch.

The same gold watch Joey had stolen, on the day Shifty had first realised he'd met his match, on the day they'd become friends. The same gold watch he thought he'd lost in the move.

And Shifty knows what's happened before he's even turned his attention to the note sellotaped to the chain, and he knows why Joey's done this, what he means to say by doing it.

He opens the note anyway, and reads it over and over again.

 _Looking for something? Your move._

Shifty looks from the note to the watch in his palm and smiles.


	3. When Space Ends, What Begins?

**Finally got around to finishing this chapter off and updating. It's been in the pipeline for about 4 years... one day I'll be less lazy. Enjoy. Last chapter focussed on Shifty and Joey. This chapter is a jump forward a couple of decades and focusses on Shifty and Martina. They'll all eventually join up at the end of the fic.**

* * *

 **When Space Ends, What Begins?**

' _He's on the very periphery of the Boswell universe. He begins, and chaos ensues.' A brief look at Shifty's take on some of the events in Series 4. ATEOTD, Shifty/Martina, unrequited Martina/Joey._

 **1988**

There are times when Shifty hates Martina. He lies awake, somehow having changed his mind about leaving her again, even when he'd made up his mind this would be the last time, and she's draped over him, suffocating him and it's _invasive_ , and her arm is crushing his throat and it's _irritating_ , and she's breathing all over him and it's _annoying_ , and she must have a blocked nose because she's snuffling nonstop and it's _disgusting_ , and he resents her so much he can't stand to look at her.

He resents her, because even as his mind is telling him just to get up and leave and never look back, a part of him never wants to be away from her again.

She has an effect on him. She _gets_ to him. She gets under his skin.

He hates that.

When people hang onto him, it makes him all the more inclined to want to go. He can't stand clinging; never has been able to. It gives him a bit of a thrill to know a woman cares for him when he can't give a rat's arse for her. Maybe it's because of his mother, friendly soul that she was, (to everyone except him) and after being abandoned so often he feels a pathological desire, no, a _desperation_ for people to want him, so it can be his turn to wield the power, to hold the potential for rejection in his hands; so he can get what he wants and end a thing before any of the pain can touch him. He doesn't know.

But the fact that he wants Martina back makes him feel desperate. Helpless. A part of him knows she doesn't want to let him go, and at the same time another part of him knows that if his bloody Joey were to suddenly declare his love for her, Shifty would be kicked to the curb so fast his feet wouldn't touch, and maybe it's the fact that, even though that's impossible, it always floats around his mind, a slight uncertainty, the smallest tremor in his steady fortress of security, that makes him want her all the more. She's his, and he wants her, and he wants her to be his, and he wants her to want him, and all of that, quite frankly, terrifies him.

Shifty doesn't understand why she's still here, why _he's_ still here in her flat, in her life. Why she's let him be. She mustn't be very bright, he thinks to himself.

Actually, he knows full well this isn't true. Martina is probably the cleverest person he's met, and that _includes_ bloody Joey (if he ever _had_ shown her any interest, they'd have been bloody unstoppable together), and if he's quite honest with himself, he finds himself thinking far too frequently that she's too good for him. He can't handle that. It's easier to act as if she isn't, treat her as if she isn't, and then he doesn't have to deal with it, and doesn't have to fear about her wising up that she could probably do better.

Plus, she _is_ still here with him, after all. Even after she's beginning to clue in on what he's like.

So.

Not very bright.

He lies there and thinks and resents, and the clock strikes two and he decides he wants his own bed at Grandad's, and he'll go, at least for now. He can sort out how to get away permanently when he's had some sleep.

He put his hands under her, flips her off him, Shifty Boswell, human spatula, and gets out of bed.

'Where are you going?'

Of course she was going to wake up. He wasn't exactly gentle in disentangling himself from her. And he hates her, because she's going to want him to stay. And when she's awake and he hears that voice and sees that face, his resolve disappears.

'Home,' he replies abruptly, not looking at her. He's not going to look at her. That way madness lies. That way compliance lies, and he wants to go home.

'It's the middle of the night.'

He turns then, and of course, he shouldn't have. She's gorgeous even when she's pissed off with him. Shifty feels that pang of guilt, and oh, how he despises that feeling, because nobody else, outside of Joey, Celia and Grandad, has ever managed to make him feel remorseful for doing his own thing, no matter what tactic they try. And even then, the former three can't always get him to give in.

'It was a nice evening,' he says sheepishly, and kisses her, and that's a bad idea because kissing her makes him want to _stay_ with her again, and he's already made up his mind not to do that, 'but I want a bit o' space, that's all.'

Martina pulls what he's come to call her 'sarcastic face.' (Actually, Martina only seems to have two states of being: sarky, and all the other times when she wishes there was something to be sarky about.)

'You know how to make a girl feel _special_ , don't yer?' She's saying it more to herself than him, but he still feels stung by it.

'What do you want me to do? What? Am I allowed no peace?'

'Oh, go if you want to, Shifty. Go if you want to. I don't mind.'

She does mind, though. She's offended; it drips from every syllable she utters. And Shifty doesn't like the fact that she's offended, nor the fact that he's bothered by her displeasure. He pulls his jeans on determinedly, facing away from her so that face and those lovely, angry eyes can't touch him.

'They're inside out, you know.'

Shifty looks down at himself, curses because it's true, rips them off again and before he knows it he's turned back around, and before he's done anything he knows, _knows_ he's not going home tonight. He doesn't want to leave her, sarky, frustrating little cow.

'You know sometimes,' he comes back towards the bed, leans right over her, and she raises one eyebrow at him, 'I really hate you.'

Martina rolls her eyes. 'That's lovely.'

And there's only so much of that attitude of hers he can stand.

He doesn't go. She sleeps draped over him, while he gets no sleep at all. And he resents her, because he wants her so much.

* * *

Shifty's first impression of Martina—and he wouldn't ask anyone to pardon his language if he discussed this with them, because the language he uses never bothers him—is that she's a snide little bitch. He doesn't have time for people like that.

'You say you're stayin' in _Kelsall Street_?' she says to him, eyeing the forms he's given to her in disgust, judgemental right down to her very _posture_ , and Shifty is sick of being judged. He'd give her a slap, but violence against women is frowned upon, blah, blah, blah, and anyway, he's supposed to be getting some money out of this.

'I am, yes.' At least he managed to stay friendly. He's quite good at that. Joey might be the most charming in the family, but Shifty prides himself to think he's not that far behind in the charm stakes.

'With a family called…'

'—Boswell,' he finishes for her, just to watch the momentary horror that flashes across her face. He has a great deal of respect for people who don't like the Boswells. If he weren't related to them, if they weren't a fairly easy go-to for a shelter, he'd dislike them himself. But a night or two with the smell of Auntie Nellie's cooking filtering through his nostrils into his brain and they become etched into his heart, something he hates when people do it. He doesn't like feeling affection for anyone.

'I'm related to them, you see –we're not sure how, exactly- but someone from the Boswell family—' he still can't bring himself to use his stepdad's name; it's too painful a memory, and it's more than this girl needs to know anyway, 'got together with…someone else…' Mother, friendly soul that she was, bless her and curse her; he hates them both, 'and I'm probably the result.' The Boswell that wasn't.

She makes another horrible, contemptuous face. 'Probably.' _I can well believe it_ , the subtext says, and he decides he doesn't like her.

He finds himself trying to describe the situation in detail, even mentioning the 'small assortment' of people his mother was so friendly with, and he wonders absently why it matter so much to prove himself to her. He doesn't have to prove himself to anyone. He does what he does, what he wants, when he wants, and all the comments about his behaviour run into one in his mind, all the same warnings and entreaties to be good, all the same disapproval, he's so used to it. He's had it so often.

'You know, Mister—oh, I can't bear it!— _Boswell_ , sometimes I think that I'm not at work at all, and that I've died and gone to Hell. The thought used to visit me when Joey came through that door.' He detects a strangeness when Joey's name is mentioned, but then she goes through the rest of them too, and she's not just cynical and a bit snide, as it turns out, she's bloody _nasty,_ she's a truly _horrible_ little person,and Shifty's knee-jerk reaction is to be repulsed by someone like that, but at the same time, he can't help being intrigued.

Not that it takes much for him to be intrigued by a woman, and he has just been in prison for six months after all, and he's horny and his special brooch is just aching for a new owner, he's about dying to make a new conquest. His last few inside were too easy. People who go to jelly when he winks at them and immediately fall in love are no fun, and he tires quickly. It's been a while since he's been presented with any real challenge—the last one was Celia Higgins, and that was a messy trap if ever there was one. The aftermath of Celia Higgins still lingers, and he remembers why he goes for easy prey nowadays—but the thought of seeing how long it would take someone so stern and seemingly unfeeling to fold is an attractive prospect. It's about time something interesting happened, after a repetitive drudgery of a prison life, and now the prospect of being trained to be _good_ under the Master of Perfect, Joey Boswell, stretches before him as his future.

And she is a good-looking woman, in a snidey bitch sort of way.

By the time she's finished trashing the Boswell political party, his eyes have creased and he's smirking and nodding. He's already made up his mind that the brooch is going to her. He doesn't even know her name. He doesn't care.

'It can't go on forever. Even space ends somewhere.' She's still talking about the Boswells, but he's deciding to take this another way.

'Oh, but when it does end, what begins, eh?' What indeed. He's the very end of the Boswell spectrum, on the very periphery of their universe. He begins, and chaos ensues. Sweet, interesting chaos.

'Oh, God. He's got the gift of the gab as well.'

It's this comment that makes Shifty decide he _likes_ her. He's itching to get that brooch onto the front of her shirt already, and when he asks what her problem is, and she tells him it's that there are probably more where he came from, he delights in telling her there probably are, just to annoy her, and when she deliberately tries to confuse him, going on about the complicated way the Boswell rent system works (as if he didn't know, though he'll play dumb if it'll elicit her sympathy) he decides he'll take a long time to sign the form she gives him, just to annoy her again (using the singing pen, the whole shebang), and already he's beginning to get under her skin. He can tell. Good. That's what he wants.

He brings out an envelope from the depths of his pocket, feels the cold, hard petals of the brooch press against his fingers.

'For you. A little gift.'

'Me? A gift?' She's a bit taken aback. He supposes when one is a frosty-faced cow with a nasty attitude one doesn't get many presents. Still, from the way her countenance changes, he can tell she's already going all fluttery. Perhaps she doesn't present as much of a challenge as he'd thought.

He's already given it to her now, though. And he's looking forward to whatever's to come.

* * *

He comes back the next morning to ask her name. Of _course_ it was going to be something like Martina—Martina, name of one of the martyrs he remembers studying at school, tortured before being beheaded—oh, isn't that just _fitting_? Seeing as she goes around with a look on her face like her whole life is one long round of torture and she's just waiting for her execution.

It suits her. He likes it.

She's also, he discovers, perfectly content with making a martyr of herself for him, because when he asks her when she gets off, she's all too happy to supply him with the times she takes her breaks and when she finishes for the day.

They make plans to go out for lunch, and Shifty decides he'll dive straight into the deep end and take her somewhere wildly romantic. He'll think of where before he comes back to pick her up. He's got a few hours.

He notices, when they part with a smile and a wave, that she's got his brooch pinned to the front of her shirt.

* * *

Martina isn't a chatty sort of person, and that unnerves him right from the get-go. Talkative women are infinitely easier—eager to go on about themselves, to the point where Shifty doesn't have to supply anything, just lets them pour out their life stories, sussing out their vulnerabilities and happily concealing from them his shady past, because they simply don't seem interested. Even Celia, who knew more about him than any of the others, still went on about her own causes more often than not. Martina seems to be making a study of him, saying very little, concentrating hard upon anything he supplies in the way of conversation. They get out to Rufford Old Hall in the car he's 'borrowed' for the occasion without him having found out anything about her at all, really, and he doesn't know if she's deliberately holding back, or whether she's just a little standoffish by nature. She seems keen enough on their excursion. She's still got the brooch on. She smiles at him enough, when he looks in her direction.

But she is impossible to decipher.

It's when they stop the car, a few metres from the house, the engine still running, that Martina finally volunteers anything herself.

'There aren't many people around, are there?'

And that can hardly be called the pinnacle of interesting conversation. It's a simple observation.

A true one, but it doesn't exactly give him anything about her to go on.

Still, for her benefit, he leans forward to peer out the window.

'You're right. I don't see a soul. Or another car, for that matter.'

'D'you think it's open?'

'Why wouldn't it be?'

'There's no-one here.'

Shifty shrugs. Martina cocks her head to one side.

'I'll go and have a look.' And she's out the car before he can say anything, leaving Shifty wondering what to do. Never has he encountered anyone so…difficult. He's faced resistance to his pursuits before, it's true, but at least he knows whether to give up or whether to pursue further on the off-chance he'll be rewarded.

Martina hasn't resisted him, but she has barely said two words to him. He's not sure what to make of that. Is she playing hard to get, or is she simply like that, closed-off to the world around her?

He sees the little figure return from the house, growing bigger as it approaches, blur sharpening into the outline of a coat and a fawn dress, and suddenly, Shifty feels all his joints lock together. He's frightened, intimidated by someone he barely knows, simply because he doesn't understand how she works.

He takes a deep breath, calming himself.

 _Take it easy, now. She's only a woman_ , he tells himself. An unusual one, perhaps, but they all have the same inner workings, once you get right down to it. Strip a woman to her core and she's grasping and selfish, even more so than he is. They're all like that. Every single one. Leave you as soon as look at you. Hurt you as soon as speak to you. And he likes to do the hurting before he can be on the receiving end of it.

 _She'll be like all the rest_.

Resolved to continue to treat her nicely, to persist with this instead of giving it up as a lost cause, he does the chivalrous thing and opens the door for her when she gets closer, offers her a smile.

'It's closed. It's always closed on Fridays.'

'Oh.' Shifty does a good fist of making a disappointed noise, but it's more about her than it is about the place not being open. 'Sorry.'

She sighs, smiles. Her eyes twinkle. It's a becoming expression on her, and Shifty's interest perks up again.

'Still. It's a lovely way to spend a lunch hour. Coming to Rufford Old Hall.' A smirk. 'To find it's closed.'

'Let's buy it from the National Trust. Then we can open it whenever we like!' He actually manages to extract a laugh with this. Perhaps things aren't going as badly as he thought. And when she teases him back, _er, I'm sorry, Number Twenty-Nine, I've got bad news about your for money to buy a stately home_ , his heart soars, because finally she's speaking in a language he understands. He can do flirting. That one he has no trouble with.

'Oh, sure I don't need you, Miss Frosty-Face. I've got _plans_.'

Martina's still laughing, but at the mention of plans, her face comes over all serious again.

'Oh, we all 'ave _plans_. Trouble is, fate has plans too.'

And, _breakthrough._ She's opened the door a chink, let him in just a tiny bit. All it took was getting her a bit more comfortable around him. She's beginning to let him see what's behind her mask, see the emotions which lie there, the cogs which spur on her state of being. She's dissatisfied with something in life. He can't exactly tell what, but if her _I'm in hell and the Boswells are protected by the saints_ rant yesterday has anything to do with it, and if that was genuine, not just a nasty comment aimed at flooring him, it might be to do with her job. Then again, it might be something more serious. He'd like to find out.

'Ah. Well,' he leans forward, puts a comforting hand on her arm, 'you mustn't let 'fate' push you about.'

Martina looks down at her hands, then up at him. He reassures her with a smile.

'It's funny. I thought all the nice people were dead.'

And the first ripple of guilt goes through his veins. Shifty isn't nice. He's always known he wasn't nice. He's deliberately shied away from 'nice', because he's had to, in order to survive. His mother was 'nice' and where did that get her? Left brokenhearted by a string of suitors, each one taking another piece of her, taking advantage of her giving nature, her desire to be loved, leaving her with nothing in return. Left in such pain she couldn't bring herself to devote herself to him. Well, he's not going to be like that. He does the taking. He won't be the one left with nothing, at the end of it all.

And, even if for just a few teensy seconds he finds himself wishing he _were_ nice, so Martina's lovely smile could be justified, he soon suppresses it. _She's a woman. She's cruel like they all are._

So why shouldn't he let her think he's nice? She'll find out, soon enough. This is part of the game.

'There's still a few of us left.' And oh, how she likes hearing that. Her very countenance changes before his eyes. She's not wary, she's not merely pleased with an outing he's tried to provide for her—for a couple of glorious moments she radiates happiness.

'Come on.' And then she has to go and spoil it. 'Let's get this car back to your friend.'

No, that's not how it works. Shifty decides when the moments end. He's in control of the situation.

He moves in for a kiss. She turns her head away.

 _What?!_ _You've got to be joking._ He was sure he was in with a chance there.

'Don't go too fast, Shifty,' Martina says before he has a chance to gather his thoughts. Her voice is soft again, pained, almost. 'I've lost too many games like these. I'd like to get this one right.'

Ah. So that's it. She's being cautious. Not that she doesn't have a right to be, and if she only knew who she was sitting beside right now, all the things he's accomplished in his lifetime, several of which he's sure would shock her, she'd most certainly feel her caution to be justified.

Funny, though, her choice of wording. She's referred to their situation as a game, which is precisely how he's been looking at it. Now he's confounded—is she actually taking this seriously, or is it just that she wants to mess around? He doesn't care either way, but it throws him in a bit of turmoil. Shifty likes to know where he stands, where women are concerned. Helps him work out his next move. If something casual is all she's after, it makes it all the easier for him to enjoy himself without having to think about the emotional ties, and if she wants more, he can start planning his strategy, building up her trust, reaching that state of total victory over her heart before he lets go.

He just doesn't know anymore. All he does know is that, whatever game they're currently engaged in, they're both playing to win.

* * *

Somewhere between Rufford Old Hall and the DHSS, he manages to acquire her phone number, which makes it easy enough to organise dinner with her from the comfort of Grandad's parlour. Already, he's got one up over her. No longer does he have to venture into her territory to see her, to ask her out.

He's still having dinner with the Boswells, so that'll mean two feeds for him. Not that he minds. He's not going to say anything, though. They made enough palava when he mentioned having spent time with her earlier today, hurled comments about stealing and other men's wives and _does she know you've been in gaol_ at him. Joey had taken off somewhere in the afternoon, and Shifty is suspicious he was up to something that could potentially ruin his game. Joey hasn't changed much from the goody-goody little boy he knew—still all high-and-mighty, insistent that everyone does the right thing (except Joey himself; he is somehow exempted), insistent that everyone is open and honest with everyone else about their own shortcomings. If he's told Martina that Shifty was in prison…Shifty clenches his fists, unclenches them, goes out for a walk to calm himself down.

He'd better start getting ready for dinner tonight. Not changing, not doing his hair—he'll go as he is; he doubts she'll have time to do herself up between work and tonight anyway, and even if she does, he's still not going to. She must take him as he is. But he does need a few provisions.

A car, for one thing. And some money. If he's going to make this a nice dinner, he's going to actually need some cash in the hand.

* * *

'Your Joey came to see me this afternoon.'

Of course, that's what Martina opens with when they sit down. Shifty frowns, wondering why she's bothering to tell him. Does she have that little in her banks of conversation to draw from? A part of him is on the edge of his chair, though. He'd suspected that was where Joey had been this afternoon. Now he knows. And he's dreading hearing whatever sordid details Joey has dished out.

'Did he?'

'I think it was some sort o' misguided attempt to give me the once-over. Or a warning.' She narrows her eyes. 'I 'aven't been able to work out which.'

'You think he was trying to warn you off me?' If he keeps it light and casual enough, if his voice doesn't betray his terror at being found out, he might actually be able to convince her the idea is ridiculous, get her to laugh it off.

She shrugs.

'He said you'd been away.'

Shifty's insides roil at that. Ah. Yes. _Away_. Away on a holiday to that cosy little resort known as prison, a place which, once you've been there, sets you apart as a social pariah. Not a good thing to be discussing on a date with a woman you're trying desperately to impress.

'So?'

Shifty blinks.

'So what?'

'Where were you?' Martina prompts.

'Oh, just,' he gives a dismissive half-shrug, 'somewhere I had to be, that's all.'

'That's a very cryptic answer.'

'Ehhh, well, I'm a mysterious person, you see…' he trails off once he realises the tone of her voice isn't accommodating, the slant of her brows isn't forgiving. 'What?'

'I get enough _cryptic_ at work. I get enough of that 'mystery' as you put it from the rest of your little family, all turning up with their little stories that don't _quite_ make sense, omitting enough details to leave you just confused enough to give in.' Martina lets out a gasp of frustration. 'I've had it up to here with _cryptic._ Just once, I'd like something— _anything_ —to be _straightforward.'_

She's angry now and Shifty isn't sure why. It's not helping his cause, whatever the reason.

'Hey,' he says. 'You know, life itself isn't straightforward. Sometimes it doesn't work out the way you want it to. Sometimes it goes hurtling down an unexpected motorway and you find yourself crashing and ending up somewhere you'd rather not be.' A poorly-concealed allegory of his own recent experience, but he's worked out it's the sort of thing she likes to hear, whether she'd admit to that or not.

'But then you come back again.'

Martina looks down at her hands for a few moments. Shifty waits. She raises her head and he's grateful to see her face has softened, a smile playing about the corners of her mouth.

' _Rubbish_.'

'But no more rubbish than you saying that _fate has plans_.'

She lets the smile out then.

'I suppose.'

He goes for a kiss.

She dodges.

Again.

* * *

He picks her up on Monday, on her next lunch break, and still no joy. Three dates now. They've been out three times and she still won't _touch_ him, and Shifty is getting frustrated beyond belief. He knows some women are notorious for waiting til at least the third encounter before they'll get into bed, but he hasn't even been able to _kiss_ her yet, hasn't been able to hold her _hand_ , for goodness' sake, hasn't even been able to put so much as a hand on her _shoulder_ without her pulling away.

And that is making him more determined. More desperate. He can't have this. It's not how he operates.

Dinner tonight, and again, she accepts, and again, they chat and all seems to be going well, but when Shifty nudges Martina's foot under the table with his, she moves it away, and when he tries to take her hand over the table, she puts both of them in her lap, and this is just getting to be too much, and he doesn't understand _why_. She seems interested. She likes his company. Her pupils are bloody dilated when she's talking to him, for crying out loud; she's interested, and yet she's being so bloody resistant to any form of contact that it's driving him insane.

Not wanting to go too fast is one thing.

Giving someone encouragement, then suddenly acting like you don't want to go _at all_ is another.

And Shifty isn't standing for it, because he's supposed to be in control in these games, and he's supposed to have her where he wants her, and instead he's dangling on a hook wondering what on earth she's thinking, and Shifty hates feeling powerless. It's like being in prison. It's like watching his mother prance off with yet another 'uncle' and leave him alone. It's like being stuck without a steering wheel and gearstick under your hands and a clutch and accelerator under your feet, and watching a million cars drive by. It's something that makes him writhe in distress.

And so, when they're walking back to the car he's 'borrowed' (nice yellow Ford Escort, though the brake is a bit harsh for his liking and the seat doesn't adjust properly) he takes matters into his own hands, grabs her hand and won't let go of it, pushes her against the car, aims his mouth at hers.

She ducks her head away yet again.

' _Don't.'_

And he can't take it anymore.

'What is the matter with you?' he demands. He's got her pinned against the side of the car, and she should be alarmed at his sudden forcefulness—alarmed, or going into raptures at his show of masculinity, because he's known both types of women—but she's not, she's defiant in her stance, refusing to be intimidated, and that pushes his frustration to another level.

' _Why not?_ '

She looks at him but doesn't say anything. Shifty can read in her eyes that she knows the answer to this question, knows exactly why she's doing this to him, she just doesn't _want_ to answer.

And Shifty knows he can't play a game like this. Perhaps she's _too_ hard, _too_ much of a challenge. He releases her, steps back from her, turns to start walking away, even though she's right by 'his' car and he doesn't know where he's thinking of going.

'You're a Boswell.'

He stops, one foot raised.

'Is _that all_?' It only takes three words from her to have him flying back to her side. He's only known her three days and she can do this to him. She's drawing him in, and Shifty doesn't like it.

And at the same time, he does.

'I know full well what Boswells are like.'

'Do you, just?' And oh, he wants to tell her now, that he's not a Boswell, that he never was, not really, and about his mother, and about his stepdad who gave him that hateful surname when it's not his real one, and all the rest of it.

'All using their charm and silver tongues to try and get favours, usually culminating in a large monetary sum being signed over to them.' She sounds like she's reciting something out of a law book, such is her tone of voice. It's clear enough she's either had this idea in her head for so long it's just become routine to think so, or she's tried to convince herself so hard that the words cannot hold real meaning in her head. He wants to know which it is.

'How can you be sure of that, then? How?'

She's flustered now. She bites her lip. He's actually made her stop and re-evaluate, and that means, he hopes, he's working his way through her defences.

'I just know.'

'You just know.'

'I know what I've seen.'

Something doesn't sit right. Yes, the Boswells cheat the state, that's fairly obvious, and yes, that would be reason enough to hate them, but he only has to take one look at Martina to see it's more than that. On some level, it's personal. Of that he's sure. He wants to ask her, only he's not sure she'd tell him. He's not sure of anything when it comes to her.

'And how d'you know anything about me, how? I told you, I'm a distant relation. I'm not one of their nuclear family. I'm not one of their little coven.'

'No, Shifty. That's just it. I _don't_ know anythin' about you. Who y'are… I know yer name's not _Shifty_ , obviously…I don't know where you've been, I don't know what you _want_ or even what you're like…'

'But I can _tell_ ye these things!' Shifty protests. Well, some of them. He can't reveal all of everything, obviously. Knowing too much would give her a power over him he's certain he doesn't want to bestow. But he can give her just enough. He wants to get his fingers under her defences and prise them away from her, get her to open up to him, and then she'll be his, and the game won. To do that, he'll have to give her a little something to keep her going. Give her a reason to trust him, even if it's a small one, just enough to get him where he wants to be.

He puts his hand under her chin, lifts her head to look at him full-on.

' _Let_ me tell you these things. Right now.'

She deliberates. He waits.

'Take me home.'

Disappointment rises like a bubble within him—disappointment and irritation, because she's trying his patience, she really is, and people don't usually try Shifty's patience without suffering for it.

'Martina—'

'If I'm gonna hear all this, I want a drink. All right?'

Astonishment flashes across Shifty's face and through his head as he realises what this means. She wants him to come home with her. Just to talk about things, mind, and have a drink with her, but he knows women and what they really mean, and he's cautiously optimistic enough to think perhaps this is it. Or if it's not, he's quite good at persuading, once he's a few steps closer to his goal.

He waits to indulge in a satisfied grin until she's safely inside the car and can't see it.

* * *

Inside Martina's flat is pinker and cosier and lovelier than he would imagine for someone of her disposition. It startles him a little bit. A part of him was imagining sterility. This makes her seem more…sensitive, somehow. Younger, maybe. Vulnerable, certainly. A lovely girl inside a sarky woman's body, who just happens to hide her hurt behind a wall of attempted cruelty. Makes him feel a bit more guilty about what he's doing.

He pushes that away for the time being. Martina has brought him a rather nasty, cheap brandy, and while he swallows it, doing his best not to retch at the vile taste, he makes good on his earlier promise and gives her a few scant details—his mother, friendly soul, and that Boswell man getting together just before his eighth birthday, growing up alongside perfect Joey, that bloody pompous prig, who was nonetheless his only friend, feeling relieved when his Mam and stepdad separated (though they'd never divorced. They hated each other too much to relieve each other of each other) and he didn't have to be around him quite so often. Never really having much success with women (in the traditional sense). Uncle after uncle, then girlfriend after girlfriend, because perhaps he's doomed that way, as his mother was (ladies like the tragic, ruined soul they can try to fix, he finds) and then confusion about her, because she is (and though he's used the line before, it's certainly true here) different from anyone he's ever met, but he's not cut out for all that serious stuff, and he just doesn't know what to do.

Martina listens intently, drinking herself into a more relaxed state as he relates this to her, and then, her tongue loosened by the alcohol, she starts to speak too, about her own failed attempts at relationships, about fears of being abandoned (his own guilt flares up at that one). About hating the Boswells, because they 'have everything', and she 'has nothing', and about being fed up with the fact that for the past five years, her whole fantasy life has revolved around Joey Boswell, and does he know how hard it is to feel that way about someone you hate, who's too self-absorbed to ever notice someone is paying them attention, showing them interest?

Shifty is surprised by the revelation at first, but he thinks back to her comment about Hell and Joey on their first meeting and her comments about Joey at dinner yesterday, and suddenly it's not so surprising after all. And oh, yes, isn't it just like bloody Joey to have made a conquest and not even known about it?

Still, Shifty doesn't know what to do now, because he was hoping to spark within her a great desire for him, and now it seems that might be a bit more problematic, and he's beginning to feel quite sorry for her and he doesn't want to hurt her when she seems to be hurting already. And all these thoughts are alien to him and he isn't sure how an honest, decent man would act upon them, but he isn't an honest, decent man, so he simply moves in, quick as a whip, and kisses her instead.

And this time—and it's _about_ time—she doesn't dodge. Thank Heaven for that. He doesn't know how much more of this uncertainty and strangeness and deep emotion he could have withstood.

He's still feeling that gnawing feeling in his insides, rather akin to an upset stomach, which he realises is full-blown guilt, but Shifty ignores it, kissing her until he's completely out of breath, pawing at her hair and her shoulders, and he really should give this up, because he can already tell that this involvement, if that's what it is, is going to test him in ways he's never been tested before. But Martina is pulling back and fixing him with a look that's one hundred per cent sex, her pupils blown to such a size he can barely see her irises at all, and this is what he'd wanted from the beginning, and Shifty decides that, just at this moment, he doesn't care.

* * *

To say Martina is possessive in her sleep is an understatement. She's _crushing._ Her arm is around his neck, his windpipe pushed into the crook of her elbow, and he doesn't know how he's able to breathe, but he manages, somehow. Her legs are all tangled with his. Her other arm snakes under him, and she grips at his side, her fingers like claws. And every time he moves, she subconsciously knots herself even tighter around him, and Shifty hates it. He can't sleep like this. He shouldn't be sleeping here at all. His policy has always been to get up and go the instant the deed is done, but after the sofa they move on to defile the floor, and then they've somehow made it into her bedroom, and then sheer exhaustion stops him from doing anything but crashing in a heap with her, tired enough to collapse into a coma as she shortly does, but his mind humming and buzzing with so many conflicted thoughts that insomnia takes over instead.

He's completed his challenge, but he doesn't want it to end here. He's only just begun to scratch the surface of what makes Martina tick, of that enigma that is her mind, and he wants so much to delve further, know her better. That's not like him. The last time he got to know a woman properly, _cared_ about a woman, he ended up a victim of Celia Higgins's revenge, and that's not a path he ever wants to tread again.

And yet he knows already, knows instinctively, knows, feeling a knot in the pit of his stomach as he accepts it, that he's going to _care_ about Martina. He can't help himself.

This isn't a game anymore.

But caring about Martina would not be right. She's been hurt enough, by her own admission. She doesn't want to be hurt anymore. She wants to be happy. And Shifty, who'd wanted her to satisfy his own curiosity and fascination, is finding now that he doesn't want her to be another of those games he always plays, another of the women he spectacularly lets down.

But what else will she be, when all his relationships, whether serious or mere trifles for entertainment, head the same way every time?

It'd be better to go now. Take the brooch back. Let her have one night of passion she can soon forget about. Let her go back to dreaming of unattainable Joey, loving and hating him from afar. Even unrequited, resentment-filled longing would be better for her than he would be. He'll go and he'll get the brooch back and he'll be gone before she wakes up, and she'll be angry, and she'll be disappointed, but that's nothing compared to the anger and disappointment she'll undoubtedly feel later on, should this go on longer.

He slides her arm off his neck, ducks his head when it automatically moves up to capture him again. He sits up slowly, slides one of his legs out of the bed, then the other, and then carefully performs an art he's perfected, replacing himself with a pillow for her to curl around instead.

Shifty steals back into the parlour, locates the heap where all their clothes were tossed a few hours earlier and begins to rummage. He'll get the brooch off her blouse, get dressed, steal away into the night ( _hah_ , funny how _steal_ is the word which springs to mind) and she'll never hear from him again and that will be that.

'What yer looking for?' comes a slurry voice from behind him.

Shifty starts— _oh, hell, oh, no—_ stands up and whirls around and she's there, standing in the doorway, wrapped in a sheet and sleepy-eyed and quizzical even though she's barely awake, and oh, no, oh, hell, he's not going to get away with this, is he?

He could just say he wants to go, of course, but he knows he's not going to. Something about her compels him to lie, to appease her.

'Me jumper,' he fibs on the fly, frantically alighting on his favourite yellow sweatshirt and holding it aloft, a prop in his deceit.

She arches one eyebrow.

'I'm cold.'

'I'll get us another blanket.'

She's disappeared back down the passage before he can utter another word. Shifty kicks himself and wishes he could kick her. It was a pathetic excuse and they both know it. And yet she's insistent, it would seem, upon taking it seriously, on calling his bluff. She wants him there, and, though he's had no qualms about disappointing someone in the past, Shifty can't bring himself to let her down.

He goes with her, his own entreaties to himself to stay away from her ringing in his ears, and he gets back into bed, too uncomfortable, too hot now she's put another quilt over it, especially as she insists on overheating him further by invading his personal space, and he lies there feeling like a prat.

He listens to her breathe and he thinks.

Martina presses her face against his chest, and he can feel her eyelashes against his skin. It's uncomfortable and tickly. Add her breath ghosting across him to that and he has to fight down the urge to bat her off him like a spider.

'I still don't know what your name is, y'know,' she says drowsily. 'Yer real one.'

Yes. Well. Nobody finds that out, not since he reinvented himself as _Shifty_. Joey knows, of course saintly Joey knows, and Auntie Nellie and Grandad too, but the rest are young enough that they barely remember him and Billy never met him, and so even within the tight-knit Boswell community not everybody knows his secrets. He's certainly not giving them away to her. Knowledge is power and all that. Martina's the sort of person who could wield power like a sword. He's not going to offer it to her.

He pretends to be asleep to avoid answering her.

* * *

His plan was to sneak off the second it turned light outside, but Shifty wakes and it's already morning and she's left the room. So much for that.

He looks at the clock. Seven. He usually doesn't surface until it's almost nine, just in time to grab what breakfast he can from the Boswell kitchen table before Auntie Nellie clears it all away, and even that is early for him. It surprises him Martina would be already up and about at this sort of hour, but then again, she works. He doesn't know what time she has to be in by. He has a very vague idea of the way employment works in general—it's never been something he's been particularly interested in taking part in.

Shifty shuts his eyes again, wondering just how he's landed himself in this situation. He's in somebody else's place, having stayed there _just because she wanted him to_ , he's fallen asleep despite being mercilessly cradled by somebody he barely knows, he's woken up and he's _still here_ and this isn't some sort of strange dream after all—and what's more, something smells nice and something warm is being pressed against his hands and he gets the feeling that whatever this surreal situation is, it hasn't finished with him yet.

'I've made you a cup of tea.'

He cracks open his eyes to look at her. She's lovely, despite having sleep-crusted eyes and dark circles under them, despite badly-done makeup and an awfully unflattering hairstyle, despite wearing another horrible starchy-looking shirt of the variety she seems to favour, despite the brooch being fastened just under the collar when he'd wanted so desperately last night to relieve her of it. And she's _made him tea_ , and it's warm and sweet and milky which surprises him, because the more time he spends with her the less he can associate this side of her with the prickly version that sits behind the DHSS counter, and he's beginning to realise that perhaps some people are more complex than he's given them credit for. Because, startlingly, sometimes even the frosty ones can be warm and sweet once you get to know them.

'Yes, you have,' he says, sipping it appreciatively. She seems pleased by his reaction to it. 'Thank you.'

'Are you going to get up?'

It's a rhetorical question. She leaves him in no doubt of this. He's going to get up. She's going to make him if he doesn't.

'Yeah, I am, I am,' he throws the blankets off and the air chills him, and Shifty realises he left his clothes in the other room.

Except no, there they are, folded neatly at the foot of the bed, waiting for him.

'Thank you,' he says again, sheepishly, taking his shirt and sliding his arms through the sleeves. 'I, er…I really should be going, now, you know.' He finishes dressing and, on an impulse, takes both her hands in his and kisses her.

'Oh, yeah?'

'Yeah.' He kisses her again. She's addictive. He wishes she wasn't. 'I've really got to get that car back to me friend. 'spect he'll be wonderin' where I've run off to with it.'

The 'friend' in question, some stranger he's never seen, will probably have rung the police by now, will be wondering why he or she returned from their weekly shop to find they had no way of transporting their groceries because their car had disappeared. If he's careful, he can dump the car in the same car park, preferably in the same space, but if not, as close as he can get, and the idiot'll think they just didn't look properly and that will be that.

'You should get a car of yer own, you know.'

'I can't afford that on Social Security.'

Martina smirks; a wicked, wry sort of affair. 'That never stopped any of the other Boswells.'

And that face, and that comment, and the laugh she lets out immediately following it, are all too perfectly, wonderfully, horribly enticing and he wonders if just another half an hour will really hurt either of them.

Which is how he ends up eating toast in Martina's kitchen instead of taking off, and organising to see her again at lunchtime today.

* * *

They spend every one of Martina's lunch hours together, going places where there usually turns out to be nothing to do. Shifty steals a different car every day and starts getting other things to take with him on their encounters: flowers off someone's grave (she wouldn't be anything like as delighted by them if she knew), chocolates from a passing lady's shopping basket (they sit and eat them in plain view of the street and Shifty only hopes that woman doesn't come back this way). He runs out of money to take her to dinner in the evenings and so he resorts to other things, trying to sneak them into the pictures without tickets and the like (it's hard keeping her in the dark about this one), and eventually, she starts making dinner for him at home instead, so that's the end of that problem.

When the weekend comes around, they shut themselves in Martina's flat and don't leave it at all. They curl around each other on the sofa watching telly, Martina cooks him meals and runs him baths and brings him cups of tea in the morning, and Shifty, feeling he has to do something in return, does the washing-up and cleans the ring off the bath and gives her a foot-rub and feeds her goldfish for her.

They kiss goodbye on Monday morning and it terrifies Shifty when the realisation hits him that for the past two days they've been playing house. It's only been a week and they've started to take up activities which are frighteningly domestic. Shifty doesn't do domestic. Not anymore. He's had girls move in with him before, and it's always ended in chaos, and they've always turned into the sort of nightmares that are still there when he wakes up. And they always, always nag him about never doing his share of the housework.

The fact that he has been actively participating in this lifestyle, has actually _wanted_ to do chores for her, has actually put effort into making the situation _equal_ , is horrifying. It's not who he is. She's been in his life nine, maybe ten days and she's already made an enormous mark.

So much for her not wanting to go 'too fast.' They're practically acting like a married couple already.

Shifty decides to crank it down a notch, take it back to the early-dates stage again. As soon as he's left her flat and she's left for work, he goes out looking for another car to nick and racks his brains for an interesting place to take her.

* * *

It's a BMW today (dark blue; owned by someone high up in something or other; impossible to believe it ever belonged to someone he'd associate with, but somehow this goes by unnoticed) and it's a picnic lunch, and it's a surprise trip to Windermere—a far better way to spend the day, he's sure, than settling into a routine in Martina's flat.

'Well,' says Martina, when she's allowed to look (not that he didn't see her squinting out the window, probably working out where he was taking her anyway), 'this is a little bit lovely.'

That's about as close to being complimentary as Martina gets, so he laps up the words like gifts.

And then chokes on the desire to spit them out again.

He's getting far too attached to her. He doesn't want to get _attached_ , he really doesn't. No ties, no tethers, that's Shifty all over. Nothing to hold him back from endless freedom. Life, he decided when he got out of prison, would be one long drive on the motorway, sailing at a high speed limit with the windows down and the wind in his hair. No brakes. No need for them. No baggage in the back seat.

Except now Martina is sitting there, slowing the car down, not to mention doing a bit of backseat driving, constantly turning him off the motorway and down slower, quieter, safer streets, holding him back when he wants to get back to the bigger roads.

It's not really fair on her. She doesn't know. She doesn't realise that every second he spends with her, he feels more tied to her, and the more tied to her he feels, the more his emotions drift into a strange, unstable state, wherein he might feel _affection_ , even something more. And the more that happens, the more he panics and wishes he could pull away.

But he doesn't. He comes back for another helping. Every single time.

And today ends with him with his head in her lap, her hands playing with his hair, and his heart clenching in a strange way as he gazes up at the sky.

* * *

Martina has a goldfish in a bowl.

She has named it Boswell.

'So I don't get attached to it,' she explains when Shifty asks her about it. 'I reckon if I don't like it all that much, I won't get upset when it dies.'

In spite of all that, she cries her eyes out when they wake up one morning and stumble into the kitchen to find it floating on its back. It falls to Shifty to flush the bloody thing, because Martina is too grief-stricken go near the bowl, let alone empty it. Next thing he knows, he's ransacking the gardens of the detached houses in the posh suburbs while she's at work, until he comes across some koi in a pond and steals one to replace Boswell.

It occurs to Shifty, as they drift off to sleep that night, Martina smiling, that this might be the first genuinely nice thing he's ever done for a woman. He's bought gifts and done favours before, but he has always expected something in return. He got that fish for Martina _simply because he couldn't stand to see her upset._ That has to count for something special, he thinks. He's almost proud of himself, though he doesn't know why.

It's too bad that, for whatever reason, the carp doesn't thrive in Martina's fishbowl and dies two days later. Martina doesn't cry, but she's very subdued, and this time Shifty takes a bit of money from the Boswell family pot when no-one's looking and _buys_ her a new goldfish from the pet shop.

'If you kill this one,' he says, plopping it into the bowl, 'I'm not getting ye another.'

This one survives.

(She names it Boswell.)

* * *

Of course, it can't just go on being lovely like this.

Because of course, as in every situation he's ever been in, along comes a huge, leather-jacketed roadblock named Joey Boswell.

' _You told me_ ,' he accuses, that bloody self-righteous look on his face, and Shifty wants to punch him, 'that you'd taken the gold brooch back to its owner.'

Joey, forever trying to play Dad, to rule the roost. It's none of his business what Shifty does with the gold brooch. If he steals a few things, isn't it _his_ business if he gets nicked for it? His decision, his consequences. Nothing to do with Joey.

But Joey has been trying to 'set him on the straight and narrow' since he was nine and Shifty was eight. Since the very day they met. Joey can't stand people who deviate from the family routine. It's why he was so resentful of Freddie leaving, Shifty thinks. They had to readjust. It knocked everything off-balance. Joey likes everything to be perfect, and everyone sitting in their allocated places all the days of their lives, being good and doing what Mummy says. Joey likes people to _behave_.

Joey has no idea about life. Yes, he thinks putting on a leather jacket and a pair of dark glasses and playing mafia for under-the-table money makes him an expert on the shadier side of things, but it doesn't. Joey's had a very sheltered upbringing, compared to Shifty. He still lives a comparatively sheltered life. Even now, what he does to earn his money is highly superficial, is playing it safe. He's not being a crook, he's just _playing_ being a crook. He has no idea what it truly means to operate on the other side of the law. He'd probably faint dead away if he knew about the sort of things Shifty has been involved in. Joey isn't as admirable as he makes out, either as a good person or as a dodgy one. He sits somewhere half-heartedly between the two states, never fully committing to one or the other, losing respect from decent blokes and crooks alike for not choosing a side.

Therefore, Shifty has decided, he has no right to interfere.

'I _was_ going to, but I thought to meself, this is the last time; I'm not going to borrow things anymore.'

Codswallop, but it's what Daddy Joey wants to hear. He always falls for the _I'm trying_ bit. He's hopelessly pathetic. When it comes down to it, Joey isn't that different from all those annoying yet well-meaning women who think this time he'll genuinely make an effort to change.

' _Steal_ things, Shifty. _Steal_.'

'So,' says Shifty facetiously, 'I'll celebrate by not taking it back.'

Hah. Take that.

'That's the truth…well, it was the truth at the time…well, it was nearly the truth.'

The problem with Joey, though, is he does his stern paterfamilias act too well. There are times when Shifty could believe he truly _was_ his father. And, much as he resents Joey, much as he has always been jealous of Joey, he remembers the times when they were kids when they had actually, for brief moments, got on. When he had loved him more than anyone else in the world. It's the thought of these that compels him to be honest, to spit out the truth while the lies are still circulating in the air. Joey has an effect on him—an uncanny ability to make him want to sit up straight and change his ways.

The same effect Martina is beginning to have.

'So what is the truth?'

'Sod it, I thought. I'm keepin' the brooch.'

'But you _didn't_ keep it,' Joey pushes.

'I gave it to somebody I like! That's nearly keepin' it!'

'I know who you gave it to,' he says in an ominous tone. He's trying to frighten Shifty, he can tell. Big Brother is watching you. Well, it's just too bad for him that Shifty already knows that. Martina told him. He won't be intimidated by Joey's unwarranted dramatics.

'An old friend.'

' _Martina,_ the DHSS lady.' Something unnerves him about Joey's use of her name. Maybe it's just paranoia, because Martina is _his_ girl, and yet it had been Joey she'd originally lusted after, and now Joey himself is sitting there speaking about her, using her name, talking about her as if he knows her, and he doesn't want to keep losing things to Joey. He's lost girls to Joey before. Shifty has more of a way with women, where the charm stakes are concerned, but Joey, in the end, is the one who's more steadfast. The one that can give them what they want: commitment and support and faithfulness and all those things Shifty's never been any good at.

'You met her for the first time two weeks ago.'

Is that all it's been? It has to be more than that. No, he counts back… seventeen days. Eighteen? Can't be more than nineteen. If that. He's lost track, but it's been so intense it feels like so much more than that. Life has always had Martina in it. He can no longer get his head around the fact that, up until recently, it didn't.

'Weeelll, she feels like an old friend, so it's nearly right—anyway, _who do you think you are?! The Almighty?!_ ' something about what Joey just said has broken his last straw, and he lets it out, his rage, his frustration. Joey is just being nosy. He's interfering. It's none of his business. ' _I don't have to explain things to you, you know!_ '

'You're livin' in _my grandad's house!'_

' _Yeh keep tellin' me!_ ' They're on their feet now, snarling into each other's faces, and it's just as well Auntie Nellie brings them each a piece of the dinner to help prepare, because otherwise Shifty would have rammed his fist into Joey's nose there and then. He loves Joey, Lord help him, but there are so many days when he's just had it up to here with him. He's his only real friend, and yet he does his best to get himself put on Shifty's enemies list, he really does.

They glare at each other, grinding at the food with the implements they've been given. It's not until after Billy has come in to subject them all to his gob, and the food has been taken back off them, that they properly speak again, and by that time, Shifty has already begun to soften towards his cousin again.

Oh, how he hates people that do that to him. He makes up his mind to be resolute and all they have to do is look at him and he's retracting whatever point it is he was trying to argue. Joey, and bloody Martina. They know how to _get_ to him. They're too alike. It's probably a good thing Joey never did catch on to the fact she was head over heels for him or they'd be some sort of unstoppable force.

Thinking about this, all of a sudden, he wants to be on Joey's good side. He wants to be able to confide in Joey about her. About how it had started off as a game, but it's getting serious now, and he doesn't know what to do. About how maybe that word he doesn't like to use when it comes to women is starting to apply. About how he wishes he could be a better man for her, but he just isn't; he came to terms with the sort of man he was a long time ago, and that that isn't going to change; and how that just tears him apart.

'I was saying,' he begins. Joey leans back; he's got his attention. 'There's somethin' inside me. Something…rebellious. I'm at war, you see, with the world. I think it started when I was at school. The teachers made me eat the tapioca pudding.'

'What's that got to do with Martina?' At least Joey can tell what's really on his mind. Shifty has always found it easier to talk in circles until he slowly hones in on his point. Joey can do this, too, in practice, if he's trying to achieve a certain end, but he picks it to pieces in others. Just another way in which he's a bloody hypocrite who doesn't know what he's talking about.

'She represents authority: next please, sit here, sign there…' he rakes his hands through his hair. She represents someone who compels him to be better, even when he doesn't want to be. Except now, it would seem, a part of him does.

'But the thing is, I'm no good to anybody. I should be on me own.' Not that he hasn't tried to leave. She _should_ get a chance at something that can give her a bit more happiness. All he can give her, in the long-term, once the novelty has worn off, is instability, and he knows that full well. But he wants her so much.

Joey's answer is a psychologist. He doesn't get it. He really doesn't get it. Problem is, Shifty can't quite bring himself to talk about what _is_ bugging him, deep down, about his turmoil, even though he wants to, and so he starts going in circles again, focussing on that tapioca and how when one puts the wrong oil in a car the engine is knackered, and Joey's getting annoyed now, but what else can he do? What else can he say? Every time he goes to say it, he can't.

'Oh, so you're just gonna go through life nickin' things…'

'Not nickin' things. I never nick things. I _retaliate_.' They've had this conversation before, at various stages in their lives. They're both sick of the semantics argument. It equates to the same thing and they know it.

'So. You're gonna go through life _retaliating_ ,' he's deliberately being snide, 'until you get _caught_ and put back in gaol again. And what about her? Martina?'

He's making him jealous again. What does Joey care for Martina's wellbeing? She's a cash-point to him, same as she's a cash-point to all the rest. She's more than that to Shifty. She's a home and a warm, cosy flat, and a cup of tea and a hot bath, and maybe she's supposed to mean more than that still, because she's a body with a mind inside it and Shifty hasn't quite learned how all that works, all that mind stuff, but he thinks he could in time.

And it's not as if it hasn't occurred to Shifty about what happens to her if he goes back inside. It'd crush her. He knows it would.

'I told ye. I'm no good to anybody.'

Joey's response doesn't bring the comfort he was hoping for. There's none of that _oh, you're all right, really_ that Shifty desperately craves. Instead, he brings forth the question of doom, a thought Shifty has been trying with all his might to prevent from coming to the forefront of his mind.

'Have you told _her_ that?'

* * *

'Martina.'

'Mm?'

It's probably a bad time to have a _serious talk_ with her. Shifty has about a fifth of the sofa if that; Martina is leaning on him, her legs stretched out across the rest of it. She's tired and work has been stressful, apparently, and he doesn't want to spend the evening trying to impress upon her that he's no good for anybody when she's barely alert enough to listen.

In the interests of being honest with her, Joey had tried to tell him last night, he really should. And Shifty, apart from the little odd white lie—it wasn't him that ate the rest of her yoghurt while she was out, honestly (it was), _yes, that dress looks lovely on you_ (it was horrible)— _wants_ to be more honest with her. In the beginning, getting her to trust him had been part of the game. It's a genuine desire, now. He wants her to have reason to trust him.

But he keeps putting it off. He can't keep doing that. He has to come out with it, and now's as good a time as any.

'I need to talk to you.'

'Can you not? I don't want to have ter _think_. I want to cleanse me mind of another day of drudgery.'

'Poor baby.' He kisses the top of her head. 'No, this is important.'

Martina sighs, sits up properly, folds her hands in her lap.

'Go on.'

'I've been tryin' to tell you for weeks now.'

'Your real name?' she brightens at the thought. That one is something she's been pushing him about lately. She simply doesn't understand why he won't give that one to her (she could force it, if she wanted to—technically the Social Security shouldn't be satisfied with only a nickname—but she doesn't want to go down that avenue, and he knows why. She wants him to tell her of his own free will. He knows it'd mean a lot to her. He still can't do it.)

'Save _something_ for our anniversary, will you?' he forces out a laugh, realising with horror that he shouldn't have said that, because anniversaries imply they're going to be together a long time and he doesn't know at this stage where he'll be next _week_. Joey's right when he says Shifty could be caught any minute and slung back in gaol. He's done enough already to warrant that. 'No, this is about something else.'

'All right.' She deflates a little, but she's just going to have to get over it for the moment.

'I'm no good for people.'

'I know.'

'No, you don't understand…' he wrings his hands, wondering how he should proceed. 'When I was a lad…'

'And your mother was off bein' a friendly soul?'

'Yes, around that time, I sort of had to learn to…compensate. For being neglected.'

She stares blankly at him. 'Compensate.'

'Yeh.'

'How?'

'I've done some bad things, you know.' There, he's said it; it's out in the open. He feels his tight chest begin to loosen.

'I 'ad a feeling.'

Shifty flinches. Martina takes one look at him, tense with fright at her words, and laughs.

'So 'as everyone, you know. Meself included.'

' _You?_ What did you ever do, Miss Officer of the Law?'

Martina laughs again, and he wishes she could just stay laughing for eternity and he wouldn't have to go any further with this conversation. So far, it hasn't really sunk in with her. He's grateful for that.

'Things you can't imagine, Shifty.'

'I'm sure I could trump anything _you've_ done.' He's certainly sure. Martina's idea of wrongdoing is probably talking too loudly in a library.

'Drinking?'

'You call that _bad_?'

'Drugs, once.'

'Only _once?_ Martina, you haven't a clue about real life, have you?'

'Or twice.'

'You're _feeble_ , you know that?'

'Lost me virginity at fifteen.' She hesitates. 'At _school_.'

'I was twelve.'

' _God_.'

'You really _don't_ have a clue, do you?'

'I do, _actually_.' But she doesn't, and her catalogue of petty nothings proves it. She's done nothing. For her world-weary attitude, she knows nothing about the world. She's as bad as Joey, she is.

She's having far too much fun with this, turning it into a game, and he doesn't want to spend all night playing _who committed the worst minor transgression in their teenage years_ , hearing how Martina was actually better off than she likes to think she was, how, really, she did nothing. She'd balk if she heard about the way he lived at times, despite her insistence that she had a 'rough childhood.' _Of course you did, Martina._ Her childhood isn't a patch on his. Anyway, he thinks, enough of this now. He's on a mission here. He's going to tell her. He needs to get her to understand, somehow. It's becoming more than he can take.

'Ran away from home,' she supplies. She's still playing. Shifty decides to spin this in a new direction, to _finally_ get his point across.

'I never had one to run away from. I did _drive_ away once, though. From the place I was living at. When things got too much.'

'You don't have a car.'

'No, I don't.'

'So you borrowed one?'

'Not exactly.' He leaves that, lets it sink in. The smile fades from Martina's face, and he sees it click in her head, spots the exact nanosecond when this ceases to be funny anymore. Her mouth shrinks back to DHSS size.

'You mean…?'

'Yes. I mean that.'

He doesn't admit it in plain speech, but he doesn't need to. He knows she's there.

'Oh.' She shakes her head, trying to make sense of it. ' _Oh_.'

'I wanted to tell ye sooner. But, well…'

'What happened?' she interrupts him. She's watching him intently, not with mistrust, not with that, he thinks, but something which causes her to recoil, if not physically, mentally. This is what he'd feared would happen. He hates Joey. This is his fault, making him tell her. Ruddy annoying, goody-two-shoes, big blond bastard. Things were going so well, too.

'What d'you think happened? I got caught, didn't I?'

'Oh,' she mutters something to herself, counts something on her fingers, puzzles over it all some more before turning back to him. 'So when your Joey said you were _away_ …'

'That's where I was.' The word doesn't pass between them, but it's there, the elephant in the room having come right over to stand in between them, towering over them both.

'Oh,' Martina says again.

Silence falls.

'I know it's awful but I couldn't just…not…tell ye.'

She looks up at him. He waits for her response, his heart hammering in his mouth.

'At least you did tell me.'

He'd expected more anger, he really had.

'Why'd you do it?'

'How can I explain?' He slides her into his lap and she goes, but he can still feel a tension within her, some emotional distance. She's pulling the shutter down on him again. Shifty's desperate to pull it up before it closes all the way.

He brushes her hair off her face. 'I was…stressed. In an emotional turmoil.'

'Why?'

'It doesn't matter. I wanted to run, you see. I wanted to fly away. I'd normally borrow a friend's car—I couldn't afford one of me own—but there wasn't one around. I'd been in a bit of a brawl with me friends lately,' this part isn't true. He's never borrowed a car from a friend. He had had no such brawl with anyone. But there are some things Martina doesn't need to know, things he doesn't want her to know. He's done enough damage without telling her more. 'I just opened a door—it was unlocked—without thinking, and drove. Didn't know where I was going. I just needed to get away.'

Martina says nothing.

'I wasn't thinking. I do that sometimes—not think. It got me into trouble that time.'

'And where did you go?' Martina is looking at the fireplace as she addresses him.

'London.'

'Why London?'

'The Good Lord knows why. I told ye, I wasn't thinking. They got me just as I arrived there.'

'You mean…they chased yer?' Martina's slightly smirking.

'Well…yeah…'

She laughs lightly. 'That I'd like to have seen.'

'Would you really?' he retorts, his voice deadly serious. A part of her is still treating this lightly, as if it were some sort of bad joke, as if she doesn't quite believe it.

As if she's refusing to believe it.

'They shoved me to the ground and cuffed me. Me forehead bled from the impact of the pavement. They slung me—quite roughly, I might add—in the nick. Would you have liked to have seen that?'

She lowers her eyes. 'No.'

'There y'are, then. There y'are.'

There's a pause, growing fatter, swelling with pregnancy as ten seconds tick by, then twenty, then more. Martina looks up at the ceiling, down at the floor, tilts her head back to look at the ceiling again and sighs.

'Anything else, while we're draggin' skeletons out of the cupboard?'

Oh, many things. Hundreds. Thousands. An entire three volume novel of misery and woe, of women whose lives he's permanently ruined, men he's broken up from his mother because he didn't like them, an entire museum of accusing faces all tearing up as he walks past, for what he did to them.

'No,' he says. 'I suppose you think that's too unforgivable to keep seein' me.'

Martina looks at him, her brow furrowing, as if she doesn't understand what he's talking about.

'No, Shifty, I can forgive somethin' that happened before I _even met yer_.'

He doesn't get it; it sounds like she's given him a _Get out of Gaol Free_ , that she's prepared to overlook it, and yet Martina isn't a forgiving person. He's seen how she operates down the DHSS, he's heard how she talks about people who've let her down; she doesn't take kindly to people who cross the line.

'Really and honestly?'

She rolls her eyes. 'Really and honestly.'

And then he laughs, perhaps hysterically; he doesn't know. It's all too much.

He kisses her temple.

'Saint Martina.'

'Oh, give over.'

'Truly. Only without the beheaded part.'

'If you don't shut up, I'll slap yer.'

He thinks she would as well. He shuts up.

Martina stretches back out, goes back to using him as a piece of furniture, as if the conversation hadn't happened at all, and Shifty just gawks, astounded.

'Shifty?' she asks presently.

 _Oh, God, here we go._ It's finally hit her. She's emerged from some sort of state of shock, probably, and she's about to let him have it.

But all she says is 'your elbow's in my back,' and nudges him until he moves, and they sit for at least another ten minutes in silence, Shifty just staring at the fireplace and brooding.

'What wouldn't you forgive?' he finds himself saying when the silence gets too much.

Martina lifts her head from his shoulder, fixes him with an intense gaze.

'I don't forgive people who break my trust.'

And of course, that's a classic, cliché answer, and of course, it's what he could've expected from her, knowing what he knows of her life, knowing what he knows of _her_ , and of course, his guts start twisting and clenching because he's already broken it, he'd broken it from the moment he met her. He'd planned to use her, then he'd planned to break her, then he'd planned to escape her, then, when he realised escape was impossible, and he didn't really want to after all, he'd wondered what he could do to protect her from his past intentions.

He doesn't want to mislead her. But what else can he do? Even having a 'frank talk' with her about the truth, he's had to omit things. There are things she can't know. And he knows that, really, she will never have reason to trust him. He can't stop taking things. Even now he's got a gold bangle in his pocket, jingling against car keys which aren't his with every step he takes, making him wince. And he can't stop lying about it.

'Break your trust,' he says flatly. 'As in lie.'

'Lying would be classed among untrustworthy things, I should imagine, yes.'

Oh, it gets worse, because he can imagine what other things she would class as _untrustworthy_. She might as well just draw a diagram of him and label it. He cringes and grimaces, wanting to curl in on himself, only he can't in front of her, or she'd instantly know about all the ways he's been letting her down.

'Martina, I…' he should tell her, he should tell her more about himself and what he's done, he should tell her, _heshouldtellherheshouldtellherhe…_

'What?'

He can't do it. He can't do it.

'I…'

He has to do it. He can't.

'I, er…I ate the last of your yoghurt.' Pathetic. Of all the things he could have said, all the things he could have owned up to, or the platitudes he could have offered instead of owning up to anything at all, he's made a confession so pathetic he can feel his insides all contracting with shame.

'I know.' She looks him squarely in the eye. 'That's not what I meant by lying.'

And of course he knows what she means. When she talks about lies, she means life-changing, soul-crushing, important-things-holding-back lies. She means lies which affect her perception of who he is, because he's hidden a crucial facet of himself from her.

'All right then,' he says, because he doesn't know what he _can_ say, without admitting that his whole life with her, his whole life in general, his whole _self_ is a lie, and Martina settles back against him, leaning her head on his shoulder as if the conversation had never happened.

 _Well, Joey_ , Shifty thinks bitterly, _at least I tried_.

* * *

'Did you talk to Martina?' Joey corners him when he pops round for his dinner.

'Yeh,' he grunts, trying to make an escape into the kitchen.

' _Yeh_ as in, you have, or _yeh_ as in you're tryin' to avoid the subject?'

' _Leave off, will yer?! Just leave off!_ ' he snaps, pushing Joey aside.

Joey is determined to control everybody's life.

* * *

'I hate me job,' Martina greets him when he picks her up the next day. He hears the refrain at least twice a day.

'Why don't you leave it, then?'

'What else would I do?'

She's avoiding answering his question by responding with a question of her own, but Shifty knows the answer anyway. It's the same reason she doesn't want to accept anything is wrong with him.

Martina is determined to suffer.

* * *

Shifty stays awake that night, in his own bed at Grandad's for the first time in nearly a week, somehow missing the warmth of Martina curled up against him, even though every time he's there with her he wishes he wasn't.

He'd known he wasn't going to get any sleep tonight, though, and not sleeping is better at home than in Martina's bed, where he'd inevitably be irritated by her heavy breathing, her thrashing, her occasional sleep-muttering, her subconscious clinginess. And he doesn't want to find himself dwelling upon those annoying habits; he wants to think about something more important. The more entangled in this relationship he gets, the more he wants to extricate himself from its web. Joey is insufferable—well, he always was, smarmy git, but this is a new level altogether—and he's sick of hearing little passing comments, when the others are out of earshot, about how he'd Better Get His Act Together Or Else. Joey never could stay away from other people's problems; he's drawn to them like a vulture to a carcass, ready to pick them to pieces and fill his belly on the knowledge that he's able to solve everything for everyone. Shifty is fed up with it. Is he not entitled to his own life? Can he not make his own decisions? Can he not decide for _himself_ how to handle the situation with Martina?

Joey is determined to control his life. That's one sticky string binding him in ways he doesn't like.

And then there's Martina, Martina whose life has been crap—although, he has learned, it's her own doing that it will always _remain_ crap, because there's some bloody ridiculous urge in her to refuse to rise above her problems no matter what. She refuses to get the goldfish a proper tank, meaning that _of course_ it will die, as they always do in bowls, soon enough, and then she can cry that they always die on her and maybe she wasn't cut out for keeping pets. She refuses to leave her job, so _of course_ she'll keep on getting verbally abused every day, and then she can grumble about how everybody hates her and her existence is like a great grey cloud. She refuses to listen to his warnings that he's not the best of people in the world, that he'll let her down, and sooner or later, he knows, _of course_ he's going to let her down, and then she'll reinforce the notion in her mind that nobody is worth trusting.

Martina is determined to suffer. Another tendril he wants to escape.

It doesn't help that, in the midst of all this, Celia Higgins has turned up again, brandishing a bottle of " _your favourite"_ —oh how he despises those words now, as he despises everything that reminds him of Celia's mind games—practically _driving_ him into Martina's arms. Martina is everything Celia wasn't, much as he did love Celia at the time, much as a part of him still might in spite of himself. Martina is more dependable. Martina is not going to put an enormous lemon cake in front of him and watch him with a vindictive smile as he's forced to struggle his way through the entire thing to appease her. Martina isn't going to start turning up at his family's _house_ and befriending the other Boswells just to get at him. He finds, though he was going to cut back on nights spent at Martina's flat, that he's now fighting the urge to stay every night, if only to avoid the next-door-ex from Hell.

Shifty tosses and turns, thinks, ponders, mulls over, runs out of ways to think about the same issue, from the same angle, and gives up, smushing his face against his pillow.

He can't think of anything to do, other than stay in the situation he's already in, hurtling further towards certain disaster and destruction.

Despite his best efforts, Shifty feels a part of him is determined to let them ruin his life.

* * *

Nicking a vehicle from someone's funeral entourage is a bad idea on so many levels. For a start, a funeral car is conspicuous, more so than any of the other vehicles he's borrowed over the past few weeks. A posh little piece like this could be spotted a lot more easily than one nondescript bomb among many, especially when it's the only one in the carpark.

Still, Shifty had been desperate—desperate to see Martina, desperate to take her somewhere nice one more time, before he ends things for good. He can't keep doing this, he'd decided last night. He can't keep putting them both through it. Not when at some point, it's inevitable things will end badly. He's sick of loving Martina. He's sick of feeling tethered. He's sick of Joey being judgemental. He's sick of knowing that one day pain will come, and he'll both feel it and be responsible for Martina feeling it.

It's a nice day but windy, the sky is blue and the grass sways and Martina's in a good mood, and Shifty is so caught up in how perfect it all is that he puts it off a bit longer, and a bit longer. They lie together in the grass, conversation and laughter coming more easily today than they ever have (and doesn't the irony bite, when he wants to snuff this out at some point today?) but she's so beautiful, and she's so happy, he just can't find it in himself to have that conversation. He pokes her in the ribs as he delivers what he thinks is quite a witty line, and suddenly she's laughing, bloody hell, she's _laughing_ , and Martina doesn't laugh often, not genuinely anyway. There are plenty of wry laughs, sardonic laughs, sarcastic or nasty ones, but this is beautiful and special, and Shifty soaks it up. She's so much more comfortable around him than when they started; she's opened up to him and let him fill her life, and he winces at the thought that he had been, at the beginning, hoping for this, if only to cause a little hurt, to soothe the hurt within him that never truly goes away by making someone else suffer. If only they could stay this way always, happy and unburdened, only he can't help feeling that gnawing of guilt as he remembers how he'd selectively omitted a lot of information when 'owning up' to her, that her view of him as a reformed character is grossly misinformed, that she loves him because she believes him to be something he's not. And yet he wishes he were that person, the one that doesn't exist to whom she's given her heart, because being near Martina, much as it annoys him at times, much as he worries about dilemmas of the soul during these times, even though he sometimes hates her with his guts, makes him feel whole, brings him the closest to feeling like a good man that he's ever been in his life.

Martina's still nudging him, giggling into his ear, and, on an impulse, and to try and chase all these errant thoughts from his mind and just enjoy the moment, he tips her over, sending them both tumbling down the hill.

Martina shrieks with delight and Shifty hears his own laughter join hers, collapsing on her at the foot of the grassy slope, his heart still pounding from the exhilaration.

The sun is shining on her face, and he moves in to kiss her only to find himself burying his face in her shoulder instead, moaning. This isn't fair. None of it is fair. He wishes he'd never met her now, bloody beautiful, bloody terrible woman.

Martina's hands come up to caress his head, comforting him, though she can't possibly know what she's comforting him about, and she's so lovely, and she's so awful, and she's awful for being lovely, and he has to say something. He just has to.

'I didn't want all this to happen!'

'Neither did I,' she says gently. Her hands clutch at his shoulders. It's probably meant to be reassuring. Shifty feels like he's being clawed, his motivation ripped from him. He persists nonetheless.

'I don't think we should see each other again.'

There. It's out there. It's done. He's said it.

'No,' Martina sighs. He studies her face. She looks sad and resigned, but at the same time as if what he's said hasn't quite sunk in. Knowing her, she could well have already come up with some explanation for this latest outburst. She's incredibly good at explaining away anything he does. She doesn't see what's wrong with him because she deliberately looks away. She _wants_ to believe the best of him. All that time she spends being untrusting, being wary of everyone who walks through her door, assuming every claimant is a criminal, every lover an abuser, and yet when it comes to him it's as if she's deliberately being naïve.

And a part of him wants to leave her with a nice memory. He can't keep this up forever. He's already slipping up in so many places; it's only a matter of time before she realises what he's truly like. And that will hurt. If he goes now, before the pain and betrayal can set in, if they end it amicably, there's a chance she'll be able to heal quickly.

Heavens above. When did he care so much about another person's wellbeing?

'You see,' he says gently, 'I'm not cut out for all that _death us do part_ stuff.'

Her fingers brush something non-existent from his shoulder. 'No.'

'You're gonna have to find another way to spend your lunch hour.'

Flatly: 'Yeah.'

'And another thing…'

'You're running out of friends who've got cars you can borrow.' A wry smile, and something inside Shifty turns to lead, because suddenly he knows what rationalisation she's given it, what direction she'll try to take this conversation. He doesn't fully understand her inner workings, but he knows her well enough to see something light up in her brain.

 _Please don't, Martina_. _Let it go. Better for you, better for me._

Even as a part of him is hoping she might, hoping she will. It'd be nice. But he can't. She can't. They can't.

'Yes,' he replies, his voice coming out strange, and she sits up, her face level with his, and Shifty both dreads and anticipates the next words that come out of her.

'If you moved in with me, of course, it would be easier.' She shrugs, trying to sound casual, but she's got hold of his hand in hers and he can feel her trembling. She's nervous. She's nervous and excited about him, and Shifty's never felt so wanted before by anyone (he doesn't count Celia Higgins all but hunting him down until he agreed to spend the evening with her, and the following two years on top of it. She was deranged, unhinged, weirdly obsessed.)

'You wouldn't need a car.'

She's never understood about him and cars. _You wouldn't need a car_ equates to _you wouldn't need air_.

'No,' Shifty says, ready to add a _but_ on the end.

'You could lie in a nice hot bath…and I'd bring you a cup of coffee, and your Social Security forms…'

And with that little husky description of a possible life, she's pushed Shifty into the dangerous realm of temptation. He'd tried to resist, but there it is. She's laid it on the table and it cannot be taken back. She's gone out on a limb and asked him for a commitment. She's dishing out offers in return which he finds hard to refuse.

And Shifty can see it all stretched ahead of him: waking up to Martina every day, falling asleep in her arms, coming home to her at the end of a long day, (or rather, her coming home to him, given she works and he doesn't,) dinners together in her kitchen and warm baths and taking turns to do the dishes. Comfort. Security. Martina. Domesticity.

And what of his freedom? What of going out at all hours, taking a trip whenever he fancies, in whatever car he fancies, no-strings fun when he feels like it? All gone. She's told him he won't need a car. For convenience, of course she means it that way, but if he doesn't have a car, or at least the potential to be near one, he might as well not have legs.

And what of their affair? What of being all over each other, of the whirlwind passionate moments they have, over the kitchen bench or on the floor or in the bath whenever they choose, of taking off on the evenings when he can acquire transport and going somewhere nice just because they feel like it, of that loved-up stage of a romance which lasts as long as it's still fresh, still new? Now will come _what time do you call this?_ And _not tonight, love, I'm tired_ , andthe increasingly frequent niggles about the way he dresses and the way he carries himself and the way he behaves, and nagging for him to clean up after himself and arguments about finance and marmalade in the butter and whatnot. He's seen it before, lived it before. Living together kills the romance. Living together kills relationships.

He doesn't want that to happen with Martina.

But never has he wanted this so much. Never before has he made plans to live with a woman and wanted it to _work_.

'Don't,' he moans. _Don't tempt me_. He doesn't know what to do. ' _Doooon't.'_

'And lots more besides,' Martina whispers, her voice dripping with lust, and then she's kissing him, and they're on the hill in Otterspool and the sun is shining and it's all so magical that he allows himself to get caught up in it.

They can't really go too far, in case someone comes by and sees, but they lie in the grass curled around each other and kiss until Shifty thinks his tongue's going to come detached and fall out, after which they just lie there and stare at the clouds. Shifty's hand is entangled with hers, her hip pressed into his side.

'I mean it, you know,' Martina says. 'I'd look after you.'

Shifty turns and looks at her, and the sun hits her hair as she leans over him, haloing her head with light, setting her head on fire (but, for the first time in his life, when he's imagined something like that, in a poetic way, not a graphically violent one) and the image is so poignantly beautiful, and she's so poignantly beautiful, and Shifty's defences just can't hold up any longer.

 _I think I love you_.

He doesn't say the words out loud, but admitting them to himself is drastic enough. He feels his heart hammer and crash, jolting forward in a lurch he had desperately wanted it to restrain itself from. He doesn't want to love Martina. He'd been fighting it. And there it is. He does.

At least, it certainly seems that way.

'What about Joey?'

She frowns. 'What about him?'

'Aren't you tragically, distantly in love with him?

'I never said I was.'

'You didn't have to. It was written all over your face when we met. What you _did_ say was enough. I filled in the gaps.' He hopes he managed to keep the jealous resentment out of his voice. He knows, when her face turns sad and she places a hand atop his head, stroking his hair, that he hasn't.

'I care about _you_ , you know.' It's not a declaration of love, but knowing Martina, it's probably about as close as he'll get.

'I wouldn't…I mean, I didn't…it's not as if I…' Her arm moves down to wrap around him and she sighs. ' _Shifty_.'

She hasn't finished whatever explanation she was trying to start, but she packs so much meaning into the utterance of his name, and he thinks he understands well enough.

'All right,' he says, working himself up onto his elbow and touching his forehead to hers, because he's too tired to manage another kiss. 'Let's do it.'

Martina lights up, beautifully, tragically, because he's such a rubbish catch and yet she's over the moon at having nabbed him, and he holds her and thinks about how much he loves her.

And how much he hates her.

Martina had asked him, when discussing Joey that first night at her flat, if he'd known what it was like to feel strongly about someone you hated.

He wonders if it works the other way round. If anyone else knows what it's like to hate someone you love.

* * *

'Tomorrow, then?'

'Are you sure you wouldn't rather wait til _after_ you get home from work?'

'No,' he can hear the happy anticipation in her voice, 'you can be there waitin' for me when I come back.'

'Wearing only an apron and having cooked dinner?' Shifty teases, losing himself in the moment briefly.

'If you like. That'll make an interesting change.'

She laughs down the phone, a crackly echo of the sound she'd made on the hill as Otterspool as they'd fallen through the grass, but beautiful nonetheless.

'I'll leave you the keys on me way out and you can get your stuff unpacked and organised while I'm at work.'

Hmm, yes, his stuff. He's got to figure out how to dispose of some of it first. He's got too many items Martina would be suspicious about. He's not going to give them back, of course. He might have to drop them into the river and watch them wash away to Blackpool before he goes round to hers.

Once he gets there, it's a bigger problem. Once he's taken things (he knows he will and there's no use pretending he won't), how does he smuggle them in? How does he keep them from her? He can feel the impending doom settling already. It's not going to work.

It's not going to work.

'Well then,' he says, managing to keep the despair from his voice, 'I'll see you tomorrow.'

'What you doin' now?' It's obvious she wants him to stay on the phone longer. Shifty doesn't think he can handle that right now.

'Just goin' to bed. Don't want to have rings under me eyes for you, do I?'

'It's half past eight,' he imagines she'd be narrowing her eyes at him.

'Weell, any later and I'd be awake for next door's daily row of _who gets to use the bathroom first_. Besides, Grandad goes to bed early. I don't like to stay up too late and disturb him.'

'Yeah…all right,' she either sounds not entirely convinced or not entirely pleased. 'See yer tomorrow, then.'

'Okay, I…' he stops himself. No _I love you-_ s. He thinks it, but saying it crosses another line, and, even though he's supposed to be moving in with her tomorrow, he doesn't think it's quite the right time for that. 'Good night.'

'Night.' He hears the tone as she disconnects.

'All settled then, is it?' comes a low, self-pitying voice from across the parlour.

Shifty starts; he'd thought he was alone.

'What are you doin' in here, then, Grandad?'

'This is me sittin' room after all, isn't it? This is me _home_ , isn't it? I can sit where I like. Not that it'll matter to anyone where I sit, when you've gone.' The old man is fixing him with the biggest guilt-inducing stare Shifty has ever seen—and Shifty has seen a lot in his time. It's what comes from going out with a lot of manipulative women, and watching his Mam go out with a lot of manipulative men.

'Grandad,' Shifty tries, slapping his palms against his knees, 'you won't be _alone._ You've still got them all next door, haven't you? Like you always had.'

'I knew it was too good to be true when you came back.'

'Oh, _God_ ,' Shifty groans. He hadn't bargained for this. He's been plagued with his own doubts and worries about this decision, about his own doubts and worries about his relationship with Martina, and on top of that he's had Joey to deal with, constantly trying to remind him that he should either be honest with her or break it off (as if it's any of her business), he's had Auntie Nellie assuming he's running around with some other man's wife and the others trying to poke their noses in once he announced he'd built a little independent dinghy and was moving in with his lover.

But telling Grandad has proved an even bigger fly in his ointment than he could have imagined. Yes, he expected the old man might be disappointed, but as soon as Grandad had found out, a full-scale emotional attack had been launched. _You don't love me_. _You just want to leave me_. _Nobody cares_. And so on.

It's a fly Shifty doesn't need, considering his ointment is already chock-full of nasty insects. This relationship, this plan to move in together, already has so many things going against it, without the guilt of leaving an elderly relative heartbroken.

What's worse, though, is that in the midst of all his doubts, in the midst of all his worries that he shouldn't have agreed to this, a part of Shifty is secretly rejoicing that this has happened. He has, if worst comes to worst, an exit strategy. It would be far, far easier for him to back out of this, being able to swallow the reason that he felt too guilty about Grandad to be able to leave, than to come to terms with the deeper, more dangerous reasons—his love for Martina, his fears about himself, his concern, no, his _knowledge_ that he'll end up hurting her at some point. It's an excuse he can live with. It's one which makes him feel less of a cad.

No, though. He's not going to have to listen to Grandad, because he's not going to back out of this. He thinks.

Maybe.

Possibly.

* * *

He goes to bed but doesn't sleep. Instead, he sits on the foot of his bed, chewing the pen he'd erroneously paid too little for at the shop to give to Grandad, making out a pros and cons list to try and help him find some semblance of reassurance in his decision to move in with Martina.

Pro: No more Celia. Con: Grandad will miss him.

He weighs them up. The two are fairly equal in his mind. Knowing Celia is sitting there fuming about the fact that she can no longer wreak her wrath upon him is as good as knowing Grandad will be sitting there sulking and pining is terrible.

Pro: He won't have to listen to Auntie Nellie moaning on about his shady past. Con: Joey won't approve.

Forget that one. Sod Joey.

Then again, the little bastard has some points. He lets people down, does Shifty. He can't help it. Whatever it is that compels him to take things—compensation, as he used to think of it as a child, after being deprived, though he can hardly call it that now- is going to get him into trouble. He'll keep on lying about the things he's stolen. Martina's trust will be less and less justified. And what happens when it comes, as it always does, in the end, to taking a car? He'll never _not need_ one. He needs one, not to get about, but because driving a car is an non-compromisable aspect of who he is. _Perequito ergo sum. I drive therefore I am._ It's been the only thing, at times, that's made his life tolerable. When he's driving, he's flying, he's feeling, if only on a small scale, a rush of adrenaline and a thrill at controlling a machine from within which makes him forget who he is, what he's done, the path to nowhere his feet are set upon.

He'd never be able to give up taking cars. It's something he needs, it's a need that aches inside his very bone marrow.

But Joey is right. It'll get him caught again. Normally, he'd be fine with the risk. But he wouldn't be fine with betraying Martina, with letting her see the dreadful side of him, the failure, the social outcast, the criminal at heart who takes and never gives.

Pro: he loves Martina.

Con: he loves Martina.

Does her love her enough to start anew with her, or does he love her enough to set her free from him? He doesn't know. He can't decide.

Con: Grandad's guilt trip isn't working, but it is filling his head with unwelcome thoughts. It'd be too easy to march in next door, fling his hat down and his coat off and announce _I can't do it!,_ make a scene about how terrible he feels about leaving the old man behind. Even Martina would understand. They'd all say he was doing the right thing, staying to allow a poor old soul the company he craves in his last days.

It would be so easy, but it would be a lie. It's an excuse that, much as he adores Grandad, wouldn't normally make him think twice.

He doesn't want to dwell on it. Because he knows, Shifty just _knows_ , that if he does, he'll end up using it as an excuse.

* * *

Grandad makes even more of a scene in the morning than Shifty had anticipated, and he finds himself in a tailspin of guilt akin to nothing he's ever experienced. He'll break Grandad's heart if he goes. He'll break Martina's if he doesn't. He wants to go. He doesn't want to go. He brings his case before the family, and they seem remarkably unconcerned, caught up in their own troubles, apart from Joey. Joey, who follows him into the living room to hash it out with him. Joey, who's always been there with advice. Joey, who's always cared for him.

Joey, who seems far too interested in Shifty's personal affairs

Why is Joey so concerned? Coming to divulge more of his infinite Joey Boswell wisdom, is he? Trying to parent Shifty again, just like when they were children and he seemed to think he was another father as well as a friend? Just trying to be his friend, like when they were children and climbed on the roof together, nicked off from school together, and Joey would try and deflect some of the blame off him?

Or is he simply sticking his nose in?

'You know, if it weren't you, Shifty, I'd be telling you to ignore everybody. Pack your bags and go to her. But it is you.'

Shifty sees a momentary flash of red.

'Oh, I'm different, am I, from the rest of the human race?! I've got two heads, have I?'

'Come on, Shifty, how many women have you let down, eh? I mean _really_ let down? How many rings have you handed over?! You were engaged to three that I know of when you were inside!'

And all of them hung around long enough for their flaws to emerge, that grasping side that's inside every woman, that makes him want to recoil and at the same time take them for everything they have. He'd thought each and every one was perfect. They'd ruined his illusion by not being perfect. And he'd had no choice than to stop trying to be better for them.

'They let me down.'

'How'd you work that out?'

'They didn't turn out to be what I thought they were!' he snaps defensively, the words leaping out before he's had chance to censor them.

'Jennifer Sands—lovely girl, devoted—moved into your flat—cooked and cleaned—used to sit there massaging your back when you watched the cup final!'

And too nice. Far too nice. _Irritatingly_ nice. Would have killed him with kindness—that was her strategy. Her way of destroying him. He can't trust nice. And when he can't trust someone, even the little things become infuriating, another form of torture designed to break him.

'She used to use the same knife for the butter as the marmalade,' he raises his eyebrows dangerously, the memory of the final straw rippling to the surface of his pond, 'you didn't know that, did ye?! Butter in the marmalade – marmalade in the butter—that's what I had to live with!' That's why, it hits him once more, he doesn't want to live with Martina. Whatever shape that _marmalade in the butter_ moment takes, things between them will never be the same. The illusion will be shattered. He doesn't want that.

And yet he does. It would be different with Martina—or it could be, if he could resist the urge to drain everything away….

He presses on with his defence anyway. Joey need never know he's wavering. ' _Ye didn't know that, did ye?!'_

Joey is pressing on too, determined to dredge up every last one of Shifty's past mistakes.

'Julie Kearns…Tracey Clarkson…'

'The only difference between those two and a nightmare,' Shifty cuts in, 'was when you woke up they were still there.'

'And this latest one. Celia. She's still hangin' onto you, son.' Joey's eyes soften, and Shifty's heart does a leap he doesn't want. He loathes Celia, and yet there was a time he thought she was the real thing. He'd felt that surge of irrevocable affection, just like he has for Joey, for Grandad. Just like he's beginning to feel for Martina. He doesn't like to hear that Celia, much as he hates her, much as she deserves to suffer for torturing him with all his favourite foods, that she's suffering because of him. He doesn't like to think the same fate could befall Martina. He doesn't like that he can't promise that it won't, because he knows—he just _knows_ —that the temptation is always too much. The temptation to steal, to fall back into his usual pattern and start taking emotionally from anyone he gets too close to. Maybe Joey is right to try and dissuade him from going through with this – better for him, better for Martina—but Shift just doesn't want to give in, yet. Doesn't want to be noble and save the woman he loves from hurt, if it means hurting him. He casts around for something to defend himself with, to defend his treatment of Celia with. He focusses on Celia's anger at him. That's all he can do, convince himself it's unjustified.

'The only thing she wants to hang onto is me _throat_.'

'Thing is, Shifty, this particular girl – Martina – she's a _good one_.'

As if Shifty doesn't know that. As if Shifty didn't have even pea brain enough to work that one out all by himself.

'Oh, she hands out stick all day but that's just it—she spends her life pittin' her wits against clever bastards like me.' There's a chuckle in Joey's voice, just for a moment, and Shifty seethes internally. So, like that, is it? And the seething turns momentarily to barely-contained rage.

He's lost girls to Joey before. Shifty remembers all too well when they were in their early twenties, when he'd spotted Alice first, when he'd spent a happy five weeks with her, when he'd introduced her to Joey, the only family member he really felt any affinity with, because things were getting serious, and that had changed everything. All of a sudden, when he'd reneged on a promise to take her out on her birthday, for reasons unforeseen and not entirely his fault (he'd spent that night at the police station) she'd gone crying to Joey for comfort. And the next thing Shifty knew, Alice had been sobbing to him that she was sorry, but she'd been talking with Joey for the past fortnight and he understood her so much better, and pathetically thanking him for bringing them together in the first place, as if that somehow softened the blow, and Shifty had had to sulkily observe his cousin's and his ex's relationship make it to the year and a half mark, secretly grinning with triumph when it eventually blew up but having to _pretend_ he was sorry for the git.

He's never quite forgiven Joey for that. He loves the bastard still; he was his only real friend growing up, and a connection like that can't be forgotten entirely, but that doesn't stop him seething about what happened, remembering it with gritted teeth and a clenching stomach. Joey swoops in with his comforting predictability and manages to do better than him with women, and Shifty hates him for that.

And it just makes his blood boil that he could have had Martina, if he'd taken the slightest notice of her, back in the day. He could have swept her off her feet, but instead he'd antagonised her, become one of the causes of her hatred for the world, turned her initial desire for him sour. And now Shifty has her instead, and Joey, not content with having ruined her for trusting anyone called Boswell, or with having sowed within her a strange mongrel seed of desire and disdain of which she won't ever let go, is now trying to push them apart for seemingly no reason other than that he, in his oh-so-worldy wisdom (yeah, right), has decided Shifty is not a suitable partner for her.

 _You had your chance, pal_. _You had years to work it out and you never did, and she's mine now,_ mine _, not yours. You never wanted her, you never appreciated her and yet you're trying to stop me from having her. Why? WHY?!_

He almost makes his mind up. He's going to Martina now, Grandad be damned. Joey be damned a hundredfold. He'll not come out of this with everything, and Shifty nothing.

And then he says it.

'She deserves a bit of peace, Shifty.'

And then Shifty realises. Shifty knows.

Shifty had probably always known, now he thinks about it, even though he'd tried to wrestle with it.

He can't go through with it. Joey might be the clever bastard who doesn't appreciate women when he's stolen them, but Shifty.

But Shifty.

He's the idiot who breaks them.

And whether Joey's do-gooding annoys him, and even if it is a barely-concealed attempt to take what little Shifty has, Joey does have a point.

* * *

He rationalises it.

Martina's hurt. She didn't have the best childhood. But really, if you think about it, he reasons, it's not been as bad as many people's. She does ham it up, this suffering, just like he does. She's just as bad as him. Yes, her parents weren't the most attentive, but his Mam barely gave him a look-in, and having one slightly grouchy dad with a gambling problem is a hundred times better than having a different dad each week. Her childhood rebellious stints were _petty_ compared to in the circles he moved in. She knows nothing about destitution, about what it's like to be forced into crime to keep yourself going, about what it's like to sleep with a knife under your pillow for fear your own friends might turn on you, wreaking some revenge for some stint you personally thought went quite well. And yet somehow, she's had a few bad turns and has labelled herself the most unfortunate soul in Christendom, and will do anything to maintain that image. She didn't get much love or attention, because she was determined to make it so, determined to push people away, determined to antagonise her family and what few friends she had as best she possibly could, from what he's gathered. She stays with people she knows will hurt her, if only to reinforce her deranged conviction that nobody will ever treat her right. Every misfortune she's suffered, just about, she's brought on herself. She has a self-loathing whose sheer size makes him stagger in amazement.

This is all true, and at the same time, it's all codswallop as well. No matter what sort of self-inflicted pain she's gone through, she has always genuinely trusted Shifty. For him to hurt her, or worse, deceive her, would cause her _actual_ pain, the sort that sends a stab through one's chest, the sort of pain that, regardless of whether she had set herself up for it, _he_ would have caused.

He's had no qualms about hurting women before. Truth be told, it's always something he's enjoyed, getting his own back on his past, on his friendly mother and her grasping lovers, by making someone else cry. It reminds him he's in control of his own life, that nobody can abandon him again, because he has the power of abandonment in his hands.

And it isn't as if the other women weren't _nice_ , either. So many of them, as Joey was quick to point out, were devoted, and yet he'd stuck firmly to the notion that they were selfish, they were uncaring, they deserved what they got, even if he'd had to remind himself that using the butter knife for the marmalade or taking up too much of the bed or moving his shoes to the wrong place while cleaning was unacceptable just to give himself one last reason to despise them. If anything, with the exception of that _insane_ Celia, Martina is probably the worst of the lot. She's nasty, she puts down those in need of her help, she's bloody spiteful.

And yet she's not. She's kind, underneath that. And she loves him. Probably, the others did, too, if he was at all successful in his plans to charm them, but Martina loving him is different from one of the many idiots he's duped loving him.

Because he loves her back.

* * *

His one final act in their relationship is to lie to her.

Joey told him to tell her the truth.

Shifty decides to do otherwise, and he has a good reason for it.

It's not a little white lie, that's for certain. It's quite a filthy, dirty-dishwater-coloured one. It will make him terrible in her eyes.

But in a way, he thinks, it saves his skin. She'll hate him for being unreliable, for letting her down, for being unable to commit, for not even thinking of a particularly plausible excuse for getting out of it. And Shifty can live with that, because, he reasons, it'll save her from hating him for being who he is. For being dangerous, for burning all women he touches, for having _deliberately_ done so so many times. For being a worse thief, a worse liar, a worse con-man than she's ever thought him to be. For destroying her.

He could never have let it get to the point where he'd destroy her.

Not her.

He has to protect her. And he hates her for it.

'Hello, Martina? Listen, Grandad's had a bad fall…I was just on me way out the door with a smile on me face and me bags packed when I heard this terrible crash…'

* * *

It's done. He sits there, hating, although he can't really point all that hatred at one target. They've all had their emotional guns pointed at him; he's not sure who he wants to fire back at first. His lover, who'd had it pointed at her heart. His grandad, with it pointed at his head. Celia next door, his dangly bits locked in as a target. Joey, well, he has a rifle pointed at Shifty's brain, or whatever part of his body houses whatever is left of Shifty's conscience, and he's jabbing at it, almost in torment.

Joey immediately goes off down the DHSS on some fool's errand. Shifty knows he's going to check in with her. To check in with Martina— _his_ Martina…only she isn't anymore.

Shifty watches him go, fuming.

He supposes Joey will go and comfort her now, feed her lies about him, look like the hero and the sympathetic one.

That's always the way with Joey. One by one, they fall to him. And perhaps that's for the best.

But even if it is, a part of Shifty can't help thinking, can't help screaming that it just isn't fair.

* * *

It's odd, to say the least, that it's Celia Higgins who drives the final nail in the coffin.

It's just perfect, too. Everyone who has ever brought about his downfall—Joey, Grandad, Celia, Martina—all conspiring to bring it about once more. Just _great_.

It's not Martina but Celia who hands him back the brooch, while proffering him a slice of potentially-poisoned lemon cake, once again force-feeding him remorse about their falling-out that he doesn't feel. It's Celia who delivers into his hands Martina's letter, and stands over him while he reads it, some sort of nastily smug expression on her face.

 _Shifty, I know now your Grandad did not have a fall, so there was nothing to stop you coming to me like we planned…_ and on it goes, using choice vocabulary like _lying bastard_ and _blancmange brain_. He doesn't bother to read it all the way through. He doesn't need to. The first two sentences spell the gist of it out well enough. She hates him. Martina hates him. Well, isn't that a coincidence? He hates her and all.

He hates himself more.

He hates Celia even more than that, he decides, because she's still standing over him, watching his heart get broken by words on a page, and he gets the feeling she's _loving this_.

'What did you say to her?' he demands.

Celia feigns innocence. 'What?'

'What did you say to Martina?'

'Who?' She couldn't possibly not know.

'The woman who wrote this letter!' he snaps. 'God Almighty, could you not have worked that out? Is this part of your little revenge plot, then, is it? Put her off me because the love between _you_ and me died?'

'The love between you and me didn't die, Shifty,' Celia says, 'you stole it and walked out the back door with it stuffed in yer pocket. Along with me brooch. If I'd had any idea you were gonna recycle it on somebody else, I'd have stuck it somewhere you'd need it surgically removed from before you 'ad the chance.'

'The brooch isn't _yours_ ; it isn't anyone's. I told ye, I give it to people I love!'

'And when you've finished _loving_ them, usin' that word in the broadest definition possible to even begin to encompass your twisted idea of what love _is_ , you take it back, like you take all the affection and all the promises you gave 'em in the first place back?'

'You're makin' it sound more sordid than it was.'

'No, Shifty,' Celia says. 'I don't think I am.'

She pulls out the chair beside him, sits down, rests her chin on her hand.

'You see the thing about you, Shifty, is—'

But he doesn't want to hear what _the thing about him_ is. Whatever it is, it'd just be a dig. And he's not in the mood for a dig, not after the day he's had.

Shifty gets up and walks out, walks off down the street, keeps on walking.

And then somehow, without even knowing how he got there, without really even registering how he comes to take it, he's in a car.

* * *

The road is a blur.

He no longer knows what speed he's travelling at. Fast enough, certainly, to be done for speeding. Fast enough, possibly, for him not to make it home from this trip, should anything go wrong. Not that he cares if he doesn't. For a few moments, he no longer cares about anything. Only speed. It's like when he first took that Porsche, the feel of driving—and driving faster and faster and faster—wiping every emotion, every bad memory from him until all he can do is _feel_. It's fantastic, it's amazing, it's almost primal, the simple relationship between creature and sensation taking over his mind and body, becoming, in that split second, all there is, all there needs to be. It overrides all thought, all worry, all care about things like _responsibility_ and broken relationships and annoying cousins and criminal records, because these things are unnecessary, not relevant in a simpler mode of existence. He isn't Shifty in that moment, he isn't Liam, he isn't a heartbreaker or a thief or anything, he just _is_ , he just _does,_ and who bloody well cares about consequences?

Shifty accelerates again, hears the engine scream and decides this isn't enough; he hasn't yet reached Nirvana, hasn't attained that optimally high state of being that comes from true oblivion, realises simply going this fast isn't going to do it for him, especially when he hasn't even caught the attention of the authorities yet.

He comes off the motorway at the next opportunity, dumps the car in Warrington and helps himself to another, and heads for home, a wild idea seizing his brain just as he seizes the steering wheel. His foot slams down on the accelerator, he's going through the gears so fast his wrist and ankle are starting to hurt.

He spins the wheel until it will spin no further, yanks the handbrake upwards and feels himself careen around so fast his stomach lurches, the adrenaline a perfect numbing agent for all the anger and resentment. And then he feels the judder as the rear tyre hits pavement and keeps going, the car swinging in an arc towards Heaven only knows what (and Shifty can only guess, a house) and the impact is upon him before he's even processed that it's coming, the shattering of glass as a bay window is reduced to smithereens around him mingling with the muffled, horrified yelps of a family totally unprepared for the calamity of finding a car in their living room.

There's smoke around him, issuing from the wreckage of the vehicle. He can hear shouts, some directed at him. He's half inside a house, half out of it, fully inside a car that's probably keeping something from falling on him. A strange limbo state, somehow in three places and not really aware of being fully part of any of them, not unlike the limbo state of his life, trapped somewhere between the states of good, bad and Boswell. Feeling nothing, thinking nothing, Shifty calmly reaches for the brake, finds it's still engaged from his reckless turn, pushes down on the clutch and puts the car back in neutral and switches the groaning engine off. He folds his hands in his lap, oddly calm while a catastrophic scene rages on around him; a burly bloke with a moustache hammers on his window and asks what the hell he's playing at, informs him he nearly killed them all, smoke continues to stream, threatening him with death if he doesn't get out, something in front of him (though in the car or part of the remains of the curtains outside he can't say) catches fire, and the chaos…

The chaos is glorious.

Being booked for driving a car through someone's living room window after a what must be record-breaking handbrake turn is a new one, Shifty thinks with a strange smile, as the pigs haul him away afterwards.

But it doesn't take his mind off what he's done.

Not quite.

* * *

 **Shifty is so dysfunctional, poor thing. Next chapter: Shifty and Celia's relationship. Whenever I get round to it.**


End file.
